Our War Torn Earth
by The Giant Daifuku
Summary: Fourth in the "World Traveler" series. Warped away by a Demon Wall, Balthier finds himself on Earth again, but it's quite different from what he remembers. Of course, a war between human hating machines and machine hating humans always makes a difference.
1. Back to Earth

Wow, I like writing _really_ random crossovers… okay then. Perhaps Terminator and FFXII is really weird. This story takes place post Terminator: Salvation. For those of you who just thought this looked interesting, but don't know what Terminator is:

Terminator Summary: In the not-so-distant future, man created a self-aware military computer database known as Skynet. It eventually became smart enough to think for itself, and realized that humans were not necessary and proceeds to initiate a "nuclear holocaust" known as "Judgment Day" of mankind. The remaining humans join together to form a Resistance, led by John Connor, and are constantly under attack by humanoid machines dubbed "Terminators" while they attempt to destroy Skynet and allow humans to peacefully inhabit the Earth.

Thanks to **ElTangoDeRoxanne** who said she'd support me in this enterprise— hopefully the storyline is understandable, but feel free to ask any questions.

* * *

Balthier turned his face upward to the rain, pattering down upon his face, a horrible substitute for the tears he should, but could not, shed. He could not bring himself to cry, as he stood alone with Fran before Ashe's tomb, black and weather stained and forgotten. The tomb itself was a marvel of white stone, but time had not been so kind as to grace the Dynast Queen's crypt with immortal beauty. The grass, that had been so tenderly taken care of, had shriveled up and died, and spiny weeds had grown up in its place. The only thing that remained was a Desert Rose, planted by Balthier and Fran themselves. The rose had overgrown the tomb completely, but made it look several times better than if it had stood alone, naked. Nearby was Vaan's grave- a hero's buriel.

Thirty years. He had come here, this day, Ashe's dying day, to mourn her passing, for thirty years. In a month, he would visit Basch.

"Balthier?" Penelo's voice, old and feeble with age, floated to out to him. She was being pushed toward them in a hover chair by a young man of thirty years, though Balthier's lip twitched. To him, the man was still a boy, and when the man was old and withered like Penelo was now, Balthier would still look twenty eight, and call him a boy. Though, he was no longer twenty eight- he was ninety-seven. Ashe, three years his junior, had died of a disease at the age of sixty four, and none had been able to halt her passing, not even Fran. Vaan had perished of the same disease.

"Please, forgive me." The thirty year old man, Penelo's son, parked her hover chair in front of Vaan's grave. "She has delusions that she sees people she knows everywhere…"

Balthier waved off the young man's worry, instead getting to one knee in order to take her hand. He kissed the wizened skin there, dazzling her with a smile.

"It is I, Penelo." He said, brushing a few stray hairs from her face. "I trust you are well?"

"Don't say that, pirate." She croaked, a smile deepening the crevasses of her ninety-year old face. "I know you've not aged a day since you got back to normal."

"Hmm… it's true, but that doesn't stop me from desiring to know the position of your health, my dear." He smirked.

"The doctor says I'm healthy as a horse." Penelo laughed, though she swiftly dissolved into a coughing fit. Balthier felt her forehead, knowing it was far hotter to him because of his deathly cold skin, but if the flaming heat of her forehead did not warn him, the sickly sweet scent of illness did. "I know he's lying." She continued. "Alas, this is the same disease that brought down Lady Ashe and took away Vaan. There is no Cleanse spell, no medicine strong enough, to stop my passing now. It will be within the next week— I feel it in my bones."

"Fight, Penelo. Do not give me another comrade to mourn." Balthier said wearily.

"Then don't mourn for us. You would think that thirty years is enough time? Surely Ashe, Vaan, and Basch want you to move on by now?" Penelo asked, her eyes sparkling knowingly. "You're a sky pirate, and you fly. You've folded your wings and let them be tied by our mortal weights— cast them off! Fly free like the eagle you are!"

"Cheerful, are we?" Balthier bantered with her. "Where shall I fly now? The pirate king needs a new sky to conquer, and the skies of Ivalice are _mine_."

"You'll find it. I pray you do." Penelo said as her son came up to them.

"Mother, it is time to go. Sir," he turned to Balthier. "The Viera there says it is time for you to go as well."

"Very well." He sighed, strolling down the path toward Fran, who nodded curtly before setting off for the aerodrome.

"She told you to move on?" the Viera questioned. Balthier nodded, and she smiled. "The past is something you always had a hard time letting go of, _Ffamran_." Fran did not miss the way his shoulders twitched.

"I want to move on, but I feel like I would be doing them all an injustice." Balthier said.

"A thousand years from now, will you still feel that way?" Fran asked. "Will you be so loyal then?"

"Humph." Balthier growled.

* * *

Fran dusted her hands off as the last Demon Wall crumbled to dust, showering them with rubble as it exploded. Balthier waved a little gun smoke away from his head, shouldering his Fomalhaut before patting his Yagyu Darkblade to make sure it was still there.

"That was easy." He grinned, bending over the tiara hovering in the middle of the room. They had gone to the ruins found deep within the Sochen Cave Palace to claim the treasures there before anyone else could, but found that three walls of the secret chamber were not what they seemed.

Now, the treasure's guardians taken care of, they were free to loot the place.

Or so they thought. The instant Balthier took the tiara from its pedestal, Fran gave a call of warning.

"_Balthier!_" An orb of purple light surrounded his body, and Balthier felt a Warp spell taking hold as a fourth demon wall peeled itself from its foundations.

It was not like any Warp spell he'd ever seen, however (granted, he'd only ever seen it in the tomb of Raithwall), and it was actually forming a solid, molten sphere around him. Then, to his terror, the sphere began shrinking. After a while, the pressure became unbearable, and he was reduced to crouching on the ground, curled into a ball, to be as small as possible, but still the ball shrank.

What followed was a very uncomfortable squeezing sensation, and with a pop, he vanished into thin air.

"Balthier?" Fran called desperately, backing toward the door as the wall advanced, the ground under its claws cracking ominously. Finally, she was forced to flee, or be crushed between the door and the wall. Though she hated herself for abandoning her partner, she fled. Better to live and keep him alive by their soul link no matter where he was, than to betray him completely and die.

* * *

Balthier emerged in a sterile, brightly lit white room that could have been a hospital ward but for the large, metallic skeletons wielding mini-guns standing guard at strategic points around the room and the array of mechanical arms and computers busily running tests and statistics.

"_Scanning._" A cool female voice stated.

Fran had once noticed that when truly terrified, he froze in place like a frightened deer, not even breathing. He did so now as the skeletons, every single one of them, swung their guns to bear at _him_. A mechanical arm extended from its housing, swiveling around with a beam of light that took in every inch of his body.

"_This entity contains: Metal— identifying… Gold, lead, trace metals. Also contains proteins, liquids, and fibers such as— silk. Lacks facilities for life support, however. Identification complete. Entity is not human and/or not living_. _Clear._" The gold was the pirate medallion that served as his heart. The lead? Balthier raised an eyebrow. Probably the scanner had identified fragmented bullets that could not be fully removed from his battle scars. All that lead was probably not good for him.

To his relief and simultaneous shame, when the voice said "not human", the metal skeletons lowered their guns. The shameful bit was that he was considered "not human". He liked to think of himself as being Hume, but apparently that wasn't the case. If he was not Hume, what was he? Balthier gave the room a thief's perusing, identifying it as a kind of laboratory. Apparently, these machines had been expecting him, as there was a large arch bristling with equipment exactly over where he was standing. Not liking to be put on a pedestal, especially in a lab, he stepped down from the platform, making his way toward the door.

There was certainly and eerie feeling to this place, especially in the way that there were no people, only these metal skeletons which were also machines of some sort. The place was also a veritable maze, far more complex than any ruin or palace he'd ever been in.

"What is with this place? Where am I?" he asked nothing in particular.

Suddenly, red lights began to flash, alarms wailing. Once more, he froze as a troop of machines went clanking by, but they turned the corner without even looking at him. Eager to find a way out of the lab, he followed them.

* * *

The source of the disturbance was a small group of people who had broken into a weapons storage room. While many of them began loading crates of ammunition and guns into their bags, another group came forward to battle with the group of metal skeletons that burst into the room.

"_Intruders identified as human. Authorized to terminate._" The cool female voice was saying. Without any hesitation, the machines attacked.

Balthier ducked behind a wall before he could be shot to pieces when the humans opened fire, laying into the machines with a hail of bullets. Many of them found their marks, but bounced off the metal casings on the skeletons. One lucky shot found its way into a machine's throat, blasting the head off completely. The machine's body collapsed to the ground, and a man raced forward to grab its gun, leveling at another machine.

There are too many machines, and the small group is overwhelmed, opting to flee through the hole they'd blown in the wall and into the open air outside. The machines gave chase, firing their guns as they marched through the rubble.

Balthier slid after them, silent as a shadow as he stepped into the cool night. The stars winked down at him, barely dimmed by a thin veil of clouds. They were so familiar…

Then he recognized it, that starry sky, the cold white moon that he had once hated and loved with vengeance and passion.

Earth. He was back on Earth. But it was not the Earth he'd known— Will, Elizabeth, and Jack's time did not have such sophisticated machinery, and the world also did not seem to be run by machines the last time he'd been there. Were they alive, somewhere? Or had they all been murdered by these apparently human-hating machines? The place he was now was a wasteland. A few, scraggly trees attempted to grow in the rocky soil, and the twisted remains of building poked up here and there. Behind him, the laboratory rose, a spire piercing the sky like a black, ugly needle. Using his increased vision gained from his unfortunate experiences, he could pick out more machines, armed with various weapons, patrolling the building's upper extremities.

He was broken out of his reverie when a piercing scream shattered the already broken night. A robot had managed to get pass the gunfire without being blown to pieces, and had grabbed one of the men. The man struggled wildly, screaming obscenities as the machine prepared for a most certainly fatal blow, curling its dexterous metal fingers into a blunt fist. Human hating, indeed.

Even if he was not a human anymore, or so these machines seemed to think, Balthier still took the human side. He sprinted down the shallow incline, using the inhuman speed and power also gained during his unfortunate adventures to his every advantage, vanishing into a swift blur. When he tackled the machine, using his shoulder as a ram, he was going so fast that for all its weight and armor, it could not withstand the blow.

The machine relinquished the man it had been about to kill and turned on Balthier, swinging its fist at him instead. He ducked, and the machine opened its mouth in some kind of hiss. But then he saw the flame thrower nestled in the back of its throat, the orange glow flickering in its depths. Quick as lightning, Fomalhaut was off his back and the barrel shoved in the machine's mouth. Allowing himself a triumphant smirk, Balthier pulled the trigger, and the machine's head was reduced to a pile of metal scraps on the ground. With a hum, the body powered down, going limp beneath him.

A few meters away, the man who had been assaulted by the machine was being helped to his feet by a few other members of the attack force. "Are you alright?" Balthier asked. In an instant, guns were trained on him, for the second time that night.

"Stay where you are, Terminator!" Balthier blinked.

"Terminator?" he asked, though he obliged them and did not move any closer. One of the men, a big African-American, gave a hoarse chuckle.

"They get smarter all the time. DON'T PLAY DUMB WITH ME, ROBOT!" he thundered. The sky pirate stood his ground, maintaining his calm composure. "The only way you coulda taken on that robot like that were if you were one yourself." the man spat, anger stretching his accent. Balthier flinched— the man had a point. Humans did not have the ability to move at blinding speeds and the strength to tackle down three hundred odd pound machines. A robot did.

"Believe I am a machine, if you will, but then also believe that I mean you no harm. Would I have saved you if I wanted to kill you? I would have just let that machine do it for me." He said.

"This could be a trick, Barnes." One of the other men whispered to the African American, who seemed to be the leader of the group.

"I know, another attempt for the Skynet devils to get closer to John and kill him. But I'm not gonna let you do that, Terminator. I'm not letting you near John unless you're tied up with chains and chained to a wall." Barnes growled. Balthier grimaced, but nodded. All he wanted to do was get away from this lab, and then find a way to warp back to Ivalice. Staying in the lab might work, but the machines, likely having seen him destroy their robot, would probably deem him a threat and try their best to kill him. The lab was not an option.

"Then do it. Chain me up, knock me out, I care not. Just take me with you to wherever you are going. I swear I mean no harm." Balthier placed a hand on his heart.

"There's no swear with a machine binding enough." Barnes said, but nodded toward his men. One came forward with a length of steel cable, pilfered from the laboratory facility, and the other with rather large gun. The one with the gun slammed the butt of it into the back of Balthier's head, with highly undue force. Needless to say, he dropped like a rock.

* * *

Reviews are highly welcome.


	2. Mechanical Genius

Thanks to **emeraldonyxdragon **and **ElTangoDeRoxanne** who are always so super supportive of me in everything, even if I decide to write super wierd things.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

* * *

Balthier allowed himself a few more moments to remain comatose, taking in the sounds of the base around him. There was a woman shrieking nearby.

"Good Lord, Barnes, this man is _human_, and you've killed him. There's nothing. No heartbeat, or body heat, _nothing_." She was shouting. "You've brought back a _corpse_ trying to tell us it's a machine."

"Kate, I told you, this thing killed a Terminator by _ramming_ it with his shoulder, then _dodged_ a Terminator's fist to blow its head off. You tell me if that's human." The deep voice of Barnes was loud in his ears.

"Fine, I'll run an X-ray. Don't be surprised when we find out he's got _bones_." The woman, Kate, snapped. Balthier decided now would be a good time to wake up before they ripped the medallion out of his chest upon finding it. He sat up, resisting the desire to tuck his head between his legs when a spell of dizziness hit him. Balthier groaned, feeling his stomach churning, before catching sight of a trash can in the corner. He lurched toward it, collapsing on one knee, and commenced emptying the contents of his stomach into it.

In the meantime, the woman, Kate, screamed. "Oh. My. God. He wasn't dead." She fell against a table, gasping.

"I was tellin' you, he was a _machine_!" Barnes pointed a finger at him. Balthier slid from a sick crouch next to the trash can into a defensive crouch, ready to spring if need be as Barnes grabbed a pistol.

"Stop it." Kate pushed his arm down. "Even if it is a machine, I intend to help it. Maybe it can help John!"

"It can help John die!" Barnes roared, struggling to lift his arm, but Kate pushed it down again.

"Please, how many times must I protest? I'm no machine!" Balthier moaned, before retching into the garbage can again.

Kate was at his side in an instant, helping him into a more comfortable position.

"See, Barnes? You gave him a concussion when you knocked him out!" she scolded. "Don't go back to sleep, whatever you do, okay? I'll get you an ice pack…" Kate busied herself at the far end of the room, while Barnes kept a watchful eye on Balthier. The sky pirate leaned his head back against the wall, breathing in and out evenly to control the pounding headache. If they just turned their backs for a minute, he would have a nice Curaga done, completely healing himself. Kate came back, kneeling once more and pressing an ice pack to the back of his head.

"John will be here in a moment with Blair…" she muttered, and Barnes wrinkled his nose.

"I told 'im, can't be too sure it's not a machine, but he told me, 'I'm not scared of a hunk of metal.'" He grumbled. Balthier decided it would be futile to protest, and only heaved himself to his feet when a rather grizzled man, with a long scar down his eye, dressed in a military jacket, entered the room. He was followed by a girl with flowing black curls and skin browned by sun exposure. Balthier could smell on her the pungent scents of oil, dust, and engine fuel, but most importantly, he smelled the scent of the clean sky. The girl was a pilot. She danced into the room in mud-caked combat boots, but he could tell the happiness she exhibited was faked.

"Good morning, Kate, Barnes." The grizzled man, who could be no other than John Connor, nodded to them, gracing Kate with a tender kiss. "Now, Barnes tells me you're a machine. A Terminator. I want to decide for myself before jumping to conclusions. Now, do you have a name? Where are you from?"

"Balthier." The sky pirate answered. "Where I come from, I would rather not say for now. I value my secrets."

"Secrets won't get you far in the resistance, Balthier— unusual name, by the way." Connor replied, leaning against a table and crossing his arms over his chest. _Not as strange or as bad as Ffamran, _Balthier thought. "I'll ask you again. Where are you from?"

"Far, far away." The sky pirate replied stubbornly. "You'll only get that out of me for now. I understand you cannot trust me— but why should I trust you? All you've done is called me a machine and knocked me around with guns, _after_ I saved your man. Hardly exemplary behavior if you're asking for boons."

Annoyance flashed over John's face, but he rearranged it into a scowl, which Balthier returned with a look of indifference. "Alright, you got me." Connor sighed. "I apologize for any harm that my men have dealt you, happy now? And now, I want you to submit to a full physical. In my presence. Can't be too careful." Balthier grimaced.

"I take it as an order?" he asked.

"It is an order." Connor replied with a straight face. Kate approached with a stethoscope and various needles and syringes on a tray. If Balthier still had a heart, it would have been tripping away at the sight of all the pointed objects the redhead had loaded onto it.

"I'm going to ask you to remove your shirt." Kate said, all business.

"Must I take off my shirt?" Balthier sighed, not ready for them to see the medallion, or the other multitude of strange things adorning his body.

"You heard the lady!" Blair chirped, punching his shoulder. The pirate did not miss the way her other hand fingered a knife at her belt. His eyes darted toward the far wall, where Fomalhaut and the Darkblade hung from a hook. His head throbbed again— no, he was not in any condition to be moving at superhuman speeds. Reluctantly, he picked at the knots holding his vest closed.

When the white shirt came off, Blair whistled at the sight of his skin. His sculpted, muscular torso was an impressive mural of scars, tattoos, and piercings. Long vines of black ink traced along his shoulder blades and down his arms, thorns, leaves, and swirls artistically placed on strategic points along the vines. It was Fran's doing— not only did the pattern look interesting, the tattoo was actually a sigil for power, a spell for storing strength or energy. A long, knotted scar stretched from his right shoulder to his left hip, a remnant from Ba'Gamnan's final battle, and a thin, white line marked the pit of his throat where he'd been shot and stabbed on more than one occasion. More scars, some from bearing full body armor, others from battles so long ago fought he could hardly remember them, decorated the rest of his back, shoulders, stomach, and chest. On his left shoulder blade, a tattooed golden eagle screamed, and a coiling black serpent, with its forked neck, hissed on his lower back. A few gold and silver piercings, some with gems, others with simple twisted designs, adorned his naval and nipples. Esper brands lined his right arm, elegant, yet gaudy in all their glory.

What caught their eyes though, was the medallion that shone from his heart cavity. "It's a machine!" Barnes roared, taking aim with his handgun, but Connor held up a hand.

"Hold your fire. Kate, continue the exam." His voice shook slightly.

The medallion, in its bed of puckered scar tissue, glinted innocently as Kate fingered her stethoscope. There was a quiet clack as she put the listener against the coin, and after a moment, she shook her head.

"Nothing. He's got no heartbeat. Just like when Barnes brought him in."

"'Cuz machines don't got hearts!" Barnes shouted. Connor turned toward his subordinate angrily.

"Barnes, if you cannot control yourself, you will be dismissed from this room." The commander snarled. Barnes grudgingly tucked his gun in his belt.

"Kate, continue." John repeated.

"Do you mind if I take some blood?" Kate asked, brandishing a syringe. "If you have any, of course."

"Not too much, darling." Balthier smiled sunnily as she eased the needle into his arm and began filling it full of blackish red liquid. Residue from the water god's spell and essence had left him with a permanent form of minor vampirism, meaning he only had to take blood every once in a while, but Fran's blood, full of eldritch magick, could last a long time. He always felt funny when he tucked her into bed after feeding— apparently his bite had some kind of venom that served as an anesthetic to relax his victim. Fran said interesting things under its influence.

Kate finished filling her syringe, and she covered the needle, returning it to the tray. Her last instrument was a scalpel. "Sorry, but the last test involves cutting into you a little to see if you really are a machine as we suspect." She said apologetically. Balthier shrugged.

"If you believe machines have as many piercings, scars, and tattoos as I do, go right ahead." He smirked as Kate grimaced.

"_So_ barbaric!" she hissed. Balthier shrugged.

"Goes with the job, love."

She cut a thin line down his forearm, using his left as to avoid irritating the Esper brands, and examined the tiny amount of flesh exposed. No metal poked through anywhere she could see.

"He's not a machine." She concluded, and Barnes, looking very disappointed, stormed out of the room.

"Well, what are you then, Balthier? By all rights, you ought to not even be standing in front of me at the moment. You ought to be buried below the ground." Connor whispered.

"I don't know what I am. I'm just… special." The sky pirate slid his blouse back over his head, missing the look that passed over the military man's face. Something akin to regret.

"Come with me." John said eventually after a moment of deliberation. "I will tell you about the Resistance, and in turn, you will tell me about yourself."

* * *

"We have been fighting, ever since Judgment Day happened and the bombs fell." John Connor said as they walked through the icy morgue. Here, bodies were kept before being buried in the ground and given funerals. "The machines, they decided they didn't need us anymore. And so the massacre began. But we're winning, we're certainly winning. One day, we'll walk free beneath the sky again, without fear of being killed by remorseless pieces of metal."

"And you are also saying that the reason why you were suspicious of me is because Skynet has the ability to make the Terminators look completely human?" Balthier asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes. And I intend to show you what I mean." John Connor pressed a button, opening a sliding door. Frigid air poured over Balthier's steel shoes.

A man, or something that seemed to be a man, stood motionless inside the refrigerator, staring straight ahead blankly. However, his right hand was exposed as being completely made of metal, frost crystals coating the shining surface.

"This is a man who saved my life— Marcus Wright. He donated his heart to me when I was mortally injured, and we've kept him in hopes that we might be able to revive him, since he's mostly machine. So far, we've never had the time to do it." Connor said. Balthier nodded, turning his head slightly to focus on the sound of combat boots tapping the floor that would be too quiet for anyone else to hear.

"I told ya, we should get some of those engineers off their lazy asses and get them fixin' Marcus." Blair said, coming up behind them. John jumped, spinning to face her with a curse on his lips and a gun in his hand.

"Are you asking to be shot, Williams?" the commander asked, leaning against the door frame and closing his eyes as if asking for patience.

"Nope. Visiting Marcus, commander?" she asked, glancing toward the body in the freezer. Balthier caught the look of longing in her eyes, and wondered what Marcus meant to her.

"Yeah. I was showing Balthier what we've been up against, and also, a true friend."

"You sound like you miss him." Balthier observed.

"I do. He was a good man, saved me, Kyle Reese, Blair— all of us, on more than one occasion. If we could somehow revive him, we would. We all need him, especially now of all times." Connor sealed the door shut again. Balthier tapped his fingers on his chin, staring at the refrigerator thoughtfully.

"You say he only is missing his heart? Why does he need one?" he asked.

"He's mostly machine, but his brain is still human and needs all the maintenance of a regular brain, which means oxygenated blood."

"So you mean all he needs is a pump to move the blood through his body?" Balthier's mechanical genius was kicking into gear, solutions running through his head like electricity through a low resistance light bulb.

"Yes." John nodded, slightly unnerved by the fanatical light shining out of the pirate's eyes. "What's on your mind?"

"I can offer you a temporary solution— an external pump that would cycle his blood for him, while I work on a more permanent solution. He'll be running as if he was never down, I guarantee it." Balthier said eagerly. John messaged his forehead.

"You know what you're doing?" he asked wearily, his hand hovering over the door switch. Blair grabbed his hand and used it to press the button.

"If this is Marcus's chance, we're taking it." She said resolutely. John sighed as the door opened.

"Alright, Balthier, I'll give you a chance. I trust you with Marcus's life— give me a reason to do it."

* * *

Balthier helped Blair and John lift Marcus onto the workbench, peeling off the clothing frozen to his body. His chest had been laid open, revealing an empty, bloody cavity where his heart used to be, and frozen blood crusted the rim of all the tubes leading into the spot. Balthier examined it with a critical eye.

"It only cycles through his brain, lungs, and stomach." He mused, then looked up at John. "Got any dialysis equipment?" he asked.

"As it turns out, we do— we use it for critically injured soldiers, but I suppose we could spare one for Marcus." The leader of the Resistance agreed.

"Get him to one of those. I'll rig up something to attach it in this little heart spot here. We just have to get the blood flowing for now…"

* * *

Marcus woke up, blinking as his vision blurred and cut in and out, everything tinted a strange shade of red. Immediately, the machine in him began identifying his surroundings, bringing up files from Skynet and displaying the information in a steady stream. He was in a hospital of sorts, machinery humming loud in his auditory sensors. In a plastic chair nearby, Kyle Reese was dozing. On the other side of the bed, Blair was sitting, holding Star, Kyle's young partner in crime, in her lap. Or she had been.

"_He's alive!_" Blair jumped out of her chair screaming. Kyle woke up instantaneously, with a yell of terror, his eyes wild. Star stopped sucking her thumb and grabbed Marcus's mechanical hand with her chubby little one. "It worked!" Blair was whooping.

"Wait… if I'm here… is John dead? Did the heart transplant fail?" Marcus asked, his voice thin and slightly artificial sounding, but genuine panic could be heard in its inflections.

"'Course you wouldn't know— you've been out of it for a while. John Connor is as healthy as can be." Kyle grinned.

"Why am I alive now? How can I be alive now?" Marcus's eyebrows lowered in a frown of confusion.

"Well… look down." Kyle said, shifting uncomfortably in the chair. Marcus, feeling much like he had when John had chained him to a barbell and hung him inside a missile silo, looked down toward his chest.

Long tubes filled with red liquid were running out of it, attached to a large machine by the bed. That was why the humming had been so loud— they were using a dialysis machine to pump oxygenated blood throughout his body, simulating, for all purposes, a heart.

"Did you miss me this much?" he asked, staring at the lengths of tubing sticking out of his body.

"Of course! When that weird guy showed up and said he could fix you, I didn't care who he was, I just heard 'fix Marcus' and bam! Here you are!" Blair said excitedly. "I could hug you, I really could, but the guy said that the rig he made isn't particularly stable enough to be shaken around too much."

"Wait, wait, wait. Weird guy?" Marcus asked, his frown deepening. "Where'd you pick him up?"

"Barnes said that they found him in the LA Skynet Lab during a raid for supplies. He tackled a Terminator who was about to kill one of Barnes's men and shot off its head."

"He took down a Terminator." Marcus said flatly. "I'd like to meet this guy. Is he a machine?"

"No, but he's… interesting. He'll probably be by in a bit to check up on you and ask you some questions, but I heard that right now, he's working on your permanent heart so you can be up and moving without this dialysis machine." Kyle broke in. "John will be here soon as well."

Star climbed onto the bed, crouching by Marcus's legs. She made some gestures with her hands, and Marcus's computerized self instantly recognized it as American Sign Language.

_Hello,_ she signed, a smile playing over her dark, chubby face. Marcus grinned in return.

"Hello, Star. You been keeping Kyle safe for me?" he asked. The little girl nodded, her black curls bouncing.

"Hey! I'm a good soldier!" Kyle protested. "I'm supposed to be protecting _you_!" Star smiled and shook her head resolutely, and the demolitions expert snorted.

* * *

Balthier hunched over the workbench, the small engine sitting motionless before him. Suspended over it on a tiny stand was a metal ring with a thin channel cut through it. This ring he now carefully etched sigils into using a very sharp knife, the blade scratching away at the metal surface. Under the engine, Balthier had carved a circular spell into a block of wood, leaves and spirals spinning off of it and into a power rune in the middle. It was the same sort of spell as the one tattooed on his back.

He was making a glossair engine from scratch. He hadn't done such a thing for almost eighty years, since he was a college student. But he had not been a protégé for nothing— the formulas were still as clear in his mind as the day he learned them.

Kyle Reese, one of Marcus's friends, walked into the room just then, carrying a few buckets of various types of oil and gasoline. "He's awake, you know. The rig worked." The man said happily, setting the buckets down and splashing volatile liquid everywhere. Balthier nodded absently, scratching another rune into the metal ring. "What's that? It looks like some kind of voodoo cult object."

"This 'voodoo cult object' will eventually become Marcus's heart." Balthier said, squinting at the symbol he'd just made. "Turn up the lights a little and bring me a tablespoon of the jet fuel, a milliliter of heavy water, and a drop of crude oil."

"What am I, your slave?" Kyle grumped, but followed the orders nonetheless. The sky pirate mixed them together and added powdered magicite he'd ground up from a chunk of magicite acquired as loot, using an eyedropper to carefully drip the liquid into the hollow channel in the ring. There— a glossair ring of sorts. All he had to do was power it up and make sure that it kept running— forever. Which was why he had also added a power storage sigil into the formula. As long as the ring spun, power would be supplied to the motor, which would pump the blood around Marcus's body. The blood in turn would turn a small turbine in one of the motor's chambers, channeling power to the tiny glossair ring. A self-powered device kept running by its own kinetic energy, of sorts.

But all of this would not work if he could not properly channel the ambient Mist into the ring. _Fran would know how to do all this. _Balthier thought bitterly, rubbing his hands through his hair. There was always the old way of working magick— using blood as a catalyst and what not, but he never liked losing blood, even if only a little, because he no longer had the ability to create his own. Being undead had its disadvantages. But it seemed the ancient way was now the only way.

"What is that?" Kyle was examining the glossair engine with a critical eye, taking in the slurry that threatened to spill out of the carved channel in the metal ring. "Is it dangerous?"

"Only if you add a spark." Balthier replied, unsheathing a knife from his belt and slicing open his thumb. He rubbed the liquid over the sigils in the metal, then on the wood block, saturating the runes with blood. Kyle made a face.

"Definitely voodoo." The young man said.

"If you say so." Balthier returned, touching his bloody hand to his forehead. He started gathering his energy as if preparing a Quickening, but focused instead on the tiny metal ring sitting before him. He heard Kyle gasp as Mist began to gather in a large enough quantity to become visible, occasionally flashing dim gold. The magicite in the glossair ring immediately sucked the Mist in, tiny electric sparks jumping from the ring to its housing as it began to hover.

In the meantime, Balthier could barely keep his own Mist Energy from running rampant. It was taking every ounce of his concentration to stop all of his energy from being sucked into the little glossair ring in an instant. Shaking in its housing, the ring began to revolve, slowly at first, but gaining speed. Balthier put a little more energy into the spell, and the ring began spinning so fast that a high pitched whine issued from the engine as it tried to cope with the power. The ring was glowing white and purple with energy. Finally, with a splutter, the engine kicked into life, pistons chugging. Exhausted, Balthier slumped back in his chair, tired, but pleased with his handiwork. Tapping into some of the power stored by the spell on his back, he healed the remnants of his concussion with a Curaga, ignoring Kyle's stare.

"Give me a moment, and I'll put it in Marcus's chest." Balthier said, closing his eyes and drifting into a semblance of sleep almost instantly. Kyle nodded mutely, still examining the whirring machine.

* * *

When Marcus woke up from his nap, he found he'd been disconnected from the dialysis machine, and the skin of his chest meticulously stitched together. Kyle, Blair, and Star were once again sitting by the bed, but now they'd been joined by John.

"Welcome back." The gruff man shook Marcus's hand. "How do you feel?"

"Great." Marcus smiled, just as Blair flung herself and embraced him in a hug that might have been back breaking to anyone who did not have bones and muscles made out of metal.

"Careful, Blair, or you'll ruin our scans." Kate called from a computer bay nearby. Marcus realized there were a few suction pads measuring brain activity attached to his temple, and carefully turned his head to view the monitor, where lines jumped at a consistent rate on the screen.

"So far, everything looks normal… the pump is functioning at one-hundred percent." A new voice entered his hearing range, and he looked to the other side to see another computer, this one a laptop, which had some cords running from it to some pads on his chest. The laptop was balanced on the knees of a lithe, wiry young man wearing an extravagant gold and jade green vest. This man glanced up at Marcus, a smile on his thin lips.

"You must be the strange man Blair told me Barnes picked up in the Los Angeles Skynet Lab." Marcus guessed.

"Strange man? I would hardly call myself so— exotic, perhaps. But yes, I am he. Balthier is my name." His voice was rich as velvet, a dark, silky cat's purr. He had a peculiar way of speaking, a mixture of middle and modern English.

"Balthier, huh? I take it you were a mechanic of some kind before Judgment Day?" Marcus asked, gesturing to his chest. "You've fixed me up good."

"Hardly." Balthier scoffed. "I was nowhere near when the bombs fell."

"Neither was I." Marcus agreed. "I was human to begin with, a prisoner on death row. Signed my body over to a lab, woke up here years later with no clue what had happened and a body made of metal."

"So, now you know our stories. It is time you told us yours. You don't sound like you're from here— perhaps we can help each other." John said. Balthier closed the laptop, sighing, and disconnected the wires from it. John stood in front of the door, blocking the only escape route.

"Very well. I shall tell you some of my story, though I will not bore you with the details."

* * *

"My name is Balthier— that you already know. I am… old." Balthier could not stop himself from grimacing as he said so. John raised an eyebrow.

"How old? Don't tell me you're twenty, all the kids say they're old when they're only twenty." He grinned.

"I'm ninety-seven." Balthier said shortly. Marcus whistled.

"Well now, that makes you the oldest man on this base, Grandpa!" he laughed.

"Don't call me Grandpa. I don't even have children." Balthier snapped. "My occupation is sky piracy—" He continued, but was cut off by Kyle.

"As in, 'Ar, matey, swash-swash buckle-buckle'?" Kyle asked, curling a finger like a hook.

"That would be the sea pirates. My kind fly the free… correction, mostly free skies." Balthier explained. "I did fly, until I got Warped off the face of Ivalice and into the Skynet Lab here. It's happened a lot to me— and as a result, I've acquired rather… unique characteristics. Most of them are useful; others not quite as much."

"Wait, you said you were _warped _here?" John asked, his eyes narrowing.

"Yes. I see the term means something to you?" the sky pirate raised an eyebrow.

"Even before I was born, Skynet has been using a time displacement device to send Terminators in an attempt to kill me before I can win the rebellion. I have been keeping tabs out for the development of such a device in our current time." John enlightened them.

"The fact that Balthier is _here_ after being warped… you can't mean that Skynet developed a prototype time machine that intercepted him when he was supposed to be in interdimensional exile?" Kate put two and two together.

"Yes." John nodded, his hands curled into tight fists. Worry creased his brow.

"But it can't be complete yet— I mean, Skynet couldn't control when or where the machine displaced time or space. It probably meant to send a probe there, and pick it back up after seeing where it came out." Marcus reasoned.

"But it got me instead, and now the probe is wandering about in the X-zone." Balthier finished the cyborg's idea.

"Exactly. And now the time displacement machine is probably under analysis, being improved upon, and prepared for another trial. One that might be successful." John whispered. "We are behind. We are far, far behind. _Kyle_!" the last word was barked. The young man jumped out of his seat.

"Sir!"

"I want you to notify the men that we are now training double time. Blair, get all the techies you know on the Skynet system. I want it _hacked_."

"Understood!" she ran out of the room, closely followed by Kyle. Marcus began to go after her, but John stopped him.

"Marcus, you'll be with me. You and I are going to help train the elite crack team that will infiltrate Skynet."

Balthier, feeling utterly forgotten in the chaos, piped up. "You can't destroy that machine yet— what if I can use it to go home?" he asked. John paused partway through trying to make Marcus walk faster out of the hospital ward.

"Can you fight, Balthier?" he asked.

"Of course."

"Right. Come with me if you want to live." John rushed out of the room, Marcus stiffly on his heels. Balthier sighed as he trotted after them, easily keeping up with his long stride.

"… I'm already dead."

Behind him, Kate snorted.

* * *

Please Review!


	3. The Gate

Thanks, **emeraldonyxdragon** and **ElTangoDeRoxanne**, for your reviews! I won't bore you with a long opening because I have not the time.

Disclaimer: I own naught.

* * *

John Connor landed on his behind with a grunt for the fifth time that morning, his fall softened by the wrestling mat beneath them. He was drenched in sweat, his shirt sticking to his skin, and his breath coming in explosive gasps. Balthier smiled, standing over him, not even the slightest drop of perspiration rolling down his face. Meanwhile, John's elite soldiers, who often accompanied him on missions into the hearts of the most dangerous Skynet facilities, clapped, cheered, and whistled.

"Had enough yet, commander?" the sky pirate asked, hands on his hips.

"Never!" John growled playfully, executing a spin that was supposed to sweep the smug pirate off his feet and dump him on the ground beside him. Theoretically. As soon as John's shin connected with the back of Balthier's legs, the sky pirate performed an acrobatic backflip, using the momentum of John's kick to help him gain distance from the fallen man. John lurched to his feet, panting and blowing, while the sky pirate stood stock still, as if turned to stone, regarding him with those alert gold eyes. It seemed so very out of place, that the ever exploding spring of energy and motion that was Balthier had suddenly been shut up. "You're absolutely positive you're not using any of your Terminator destroying skills?" the commander asked, somewhat unnerved. Balthier shook his head, breaking his stony cocoon, flashing a smile.

"You'd know if I were doing anything like that." He purred, as John lunged for him again. The pirate dodged to the side, his hand shooting out and wrapping about the back of his neck, and levering him into a choke. John struggled, but his futile efforts were not enough to break Balthier's grip, and he ended up tapping out.

"How did you get so good?" he gasped, messaging his throat. Balthier shrugged.

"I was a soldier, a long time ago, a member of the elite forces. But, that was almost seventy years ago. I try not to dwell on the past." He said nonchalantly. The commander opened his mouth to ask another question, but they were interrupted by more cheers.

"You get 'im, girl!" the soldiers were hooting as Blair apparently was proceeding to tie Marcus up in knots. The cyborg was struggling madly, but for all the strength he exerted, Blair only levered one of his appendages in such a way that he only ended up in even more of a bind. Marcus finally slammed his head against the ground in defeat.

"I quit!" he yelled, and Blair helped him to his feet, giving him a kiss and a pat on the head.

"It's all right, metal man. I'm sure that you can beat everyone else on this base." She chided him, and Marcus snorted, rotating his arm.

"All right? I think you almost popped my arm off!" he growled, and the pilot laughed.

"At least you don't go easy on me!" she chirped. "Right, who wants a go at this fantastic fellow?" she held her hands out as if Marcus was an object on display in an auction hall.

John and several of his men pushed Balthier from their midst. "Traitor!" the pirate muttered.

"Blackguard." John replied. "Marcus, you wanted to see what kind of man could take on a Terminator. Here you go!"

"All right!" Marcus grinned. Balthier cracked his neck, sliding his vest off and tossing his white shirt aside. A murmur swept through their audience at the sight of his scars, tattoos, and shining piercings, the glitter almost an irresistible target for anyone who wanted a shot at that cold, dead chest.

Marcus shot forward, and Balthier feinted, about to catch the cyborg in the same, fatal crush he had administered to John moments earlier, but Marcus had the advantage of mechanical anticipation. He sweeps Balthier's strike aside, his fist connecting with the sky pirate's gut.

Balthier collapsed to one knee, wheezing, his eyes focusing on the image of Marcus's knee coming for his face. Seconds before impact, he managed to gather his thoughts enough so that he started blocking the blows, passing some of the stronger ones to the side. When the cyborg comes in for a sweep, the pirate dances backward before lunging for Marcus's unprotected sides.

He was almost like a panther, all lithe, sinuous muscle and perfect coordination, but again, Marcus caught him in the midriff, pinning him to the ground.

"You're not giving me anymore of a challenge than John does." Marcus grinned, and Balthier suddenly smiled as well. All Marcus saw was a flash of silver eyes, and the next thing he knew, he was on his back with Balthier's hand around his throat, his other inches away from his face, fingers curled into blunt claws. Marcus gulped, and Balthier slid off his chest, offering him his hand to help him to his feet.

"What was that?" the cyborg asked, and the sky pirate smiled conspiratorially.

"It's a secret."

* * *

Marcus shoveled spoonful after spoonful of baked beans into his mouth, while John sat back in his chair, sipping coffee with amusement written on his face. "Don't eat too fast or you'll be sick, Wright." He chided the cyborg, who took a long draught of water out of a canteen.

"Was outta it for three years. The old brain cells need nourishment, see?" Marcus responded. Kyle gnawed a strip of beef jerky that had been brought in by a set of ranchers living a few miles from the city.

"Don't eat too many beans, Marcus, or you'll get gas." He teased, and the other grunted.

"Don't get any gas when you're a machine. Who are all of you, my mom?"

John snorted into his cup. Kate was hovering at his shoulder, her hand like a delicate white butterfly against the black cloth of his jacket. Blair lounged at the other end of the table with a few of her pilot friends, and Balthier, and was currently engaging him in a very animated talk about flying machines. The rest of the mess hall filled with the rest of the elite group that was going to raid the Skynet facility in order to sabotage the time machine. Even Barnes suffered to sit at the table with them, though he spoke rarely to Marcus or Balthier.

"Are your troops usually this animated before a battle?" Balthier asked, polishing the barrel of Fomalhaut with a rag and angling it to catch the light.

John looked up from his mug. "They have cause to be. They are all about to become instrumental pieces in the Resistance. In short, they are about to become famous."

Balthier raised his eyes to gaze at the tables occupied by the twenty men and women who would participate in the assault. How many of them would return alive? How many wives would become widows on tomorrow night?

How many children would be orphans? An image of Vaan and Penelo flashed through his mind, and he shook his head. Penelo had probably passed away by now. When would her funeral be?

"Hey, you still here?" Blair waved a hand in front of his face, and Balthier blinked.

"I'm here. I was just thinking, don't worry." He replied.

"What about?" Kyle scooted his chair closer like a child anticipating a story. Which, considering he was approximately seventy five years older than the soldier, made sense to the sky pirate.

"Nothing. Don't worry about it. Just… homesick.

"We'll get you home with that timey-wimey machine, don't you worry." The young man promised, and John nodded.

"Help us, and we'll help you."

* * *

The Skynet facility was easy enough to crack, once Marcus disabled the security system. The cyborg's frame shook, his blue eyes narrowed as he focused on interfacing with the computer. As soon as the doors opened, the team sprinted inside.

Balthier peered around the corner, taking in the appearance of Terminators clanking through the hall, hands on their guns. _This way_, he signed at the team behind him, padding down the opposite hall with as much noise as a cat on the prowl. The other men followed with slightly less finesse. The lab was easy to find— more and more Terminators guarded every corner. In fact, it was as if they were lined up to go somewhere…

"Let's lay low for a moment." John whispered. "There's too many of 'em to fight."

After a while, the entire column of machines marched through a door at the end of the hall, and the squad tiptoed after them. Balthier quietly pulled Fomalhaut from the straps on his back and peeked into the room. To his horror, the regiment of Terminators was marching into a swirling purple vortex under a white arch.

They had opened a gate, but to where?

"Shit." Blair whispered as the last machine vanished through the portal.

"Hurry, we can still make it through! Follow them into that Gate!" John ordered, racing toward it.

"But we don't even know where it goes!" Marcus objected. "It might not be the right time, and then we're stranded."

"There's no gettin' out now, boys n' girls. We go through, or we try to leave and die." Barnes said from his position by the door. Marcus stuck his head around the door, and pulled back before his head could be blown off his shoulders by a rain of machine gun fire from a troop of T-600's marching down the corridor.

"Damn! Everyone through the portal, _now!_" John yelled as the first robot rounded the corner. As the team rushed through the gate, the machines began laying into the crowd around the portal.

Screams rang out as burning hot bullets bit into fragile human flesh, blood splashing on the white tiled floor. Marcus flung himself on top of Blair, shielding her from the bullets with his own metal reinforced back. Balthier bent Mist to his will, hopelessly frying the wiring of the foremost T-600's with a Thundaga spell, before he turned and pushed John through the portal.

John's eyes were wide as he fell through the Gate. The sky pirate waved. "I'll catch up to you, just don't leave the Gate area."

With a roar, Marcus charged the nearest T-600, ripping through it with brute strength when it went for Blair, but she easily held her own, slipping under a strike from a machine gun butt to plunge her fist into the base of a Terminator's skull. She ripped out a handful of wiring, and the machine slowed, its arms and legs moving jerkily, before Balthier finished it with a gunshot to the head. He jerked his head to the portal. "You're next." He commanded, and they dashed through the swirling vortex together, the strong-willed military woman in the lead. Kyle slipped after them, lugging a pack of grenades. Now he was the only one left, and he attempted to back toward the portal, but to no avail.

The Terminators descended upon him like flies to a light, identifying him as the one who had felled their mechanical brother earlier, and riddled his body full of holes. Balthier put a hand over his stomach as something surely never meant to see the light of day poked through the numerous gashes he had just acquired.

"Bugger all, this was my favorite shirt," he grumbled as he began to regenerate. He dodged another hail of bullets by ducking behind a computer bay, then cast another Thundaga spell, the bolt of electricity crackling through the room. When a machine got too close, he plunged his Yagyu Darkblade through its face, and the glowing red eyes in the hideous metal skull dimmed as sparks jumped from its circuitry to the ninja sword. He began backing toward the portal, training Fomalhaut on a computer bay that seemed to be controlling the Gate. In his distraction, he did not see the gun barrel trained on his head until a bullet lodged itself firmly in his eye.

He gave a cry of agony, blood pouring down his face like tears. The Terminator that had blinded him came forward, the others parting to let it through. It picked him up by his throat, cranking its jaws open, and once again, Balthier found himself staring down the mouth of a flamethrower for the second time that week. He threw his arm in front of his face, just as a blast of fire that charred his arm to the bone narrowly missed his face. _The leading man could never lose his face, _Balthier thought dizzily as what remained of his vision threatened to fade to black, _but_ _an eye is certainly not off the list_. By the gods, he wanted to just go to sleep, using the death trance to regenerate fully, then get up and get away, but if he did that, the machines would take the opportunity to most likely massacre John and his men as they waited on the other side of the portal. Dying would have to wait a few more minutes.

Balthier curled his good hand into a fist and slugged the Terminator in its grinning face. The attack bent its head back at an unnatural angle, and it dropped him to the floor. Finishing his original intentions, he shot the control panel, though his aim was slightly off because he only had one eye to see with, and, sucking bruised knuckles, vanished through the portal before it dissipated.

* * *

When the creature came crawling through the vanishing portal, John Connor's first impulse was to shoot it, but he refrained purely out of curiosity. Its skin was an unhealthy pale color; blood poured from its face, black as night. When it heard the click of the guns, it raised its head and hissed, mouth wide and fangs barred, blood dripping from its chin, a single silver eye wide with either fear or warning. It took quite some time for John to realize that this monstrosity was Balthier.

"My God… what happened to you?" he cried. The sky pirate climbed shakily to his feet, but Blair grabbed his shoulders, trying to make him sit again. He knocked her hands aside, the movement fast and somewhat jerky.

"Don't touch me." He rasped. "Don't tempt me with your warmth."

"You're not in any position to be standing, Mister!" she shouted. Balthier shook his head.

"I'll be fine… just give me a moment." he groaned, probing his lost eye with his fingers. "Marcus, I'm going to ask you to do me a favor. Can you get this bullet out of my eye? Your fingers should be small enough. And you're not really human— it's best this way."

"Uh, okay… are you sure you're going to be fine? I mean, you've been shot to pieces. We should be trying to heal you. Your eye is the least of our worries…" the cyborg said, reading the statistics the machine in him were feeding. They were telling him that Balthier was critically injured, and would not survive any kind of medical treatment, but his true eyes were telling him other things.

"Take the bullets out of my body too, if that's what you want to do. Just get this sodding bullet out of my bloody eye!" the sky pirate howled.

"Okay, okay! Sheesh!" Marcus pursed his lips in disgust as he used his mechanical fingers to probe the mass of pulpy, bloody flesh occupying Balthier's left eye socket, eventually encountering an oblong object that the sensors in his fingertips identified as metal. When he pulled, the bullet came out, eye and all, and Balthier gave a muted cry, clenching his fists on the ground to keep from lashing out in his anguish.

"Thank you," he breathed, relaxing somewhat before regaining his businesslike composure and wrapping some bandages over his eye, then used a Cure spell to numb the pain. "So, what happened while I was busy getting killed?" he asked.

"We managed to bring down most of the Terminator regiment that went through the portal before us, though we lost a few good men and women in the process before the last of 'em retreated. One thing's for sure— this ain't LA." Kyle said glumly.

"Then, where are we?" Blair asked, shivering in the cold. "It's like a cave of some sort, and there's all this water everywhere."

Balthier sniffed the air, sifting and categorizing the scents rolling over his tongue. The ugly scent of headless giants assault his senses, and he immediately knew where they were.

"This isn't even Earth. Shall I dare say it? We've returned to where I was Warped away in the first place. This is the Sochen Cave Palace."

* * *

Updated!


	4. The Destroyer

My muse... died... halfway... through this chapter...

Thanks to **emeraldonyxdragon **and **ElTangoDeRoxanne**... man... I'm tired...

I own nothing.

* * *

"… The what cave palace?" Kyle asked blankly.

"The Sochen Cave Palace, a small, but labyrinthine network of caverns running from Old Archades to the Tchita Uplands. You're not on Earth anymore— the portal went to my world. To Ivalice." Balthier replied, resting the palm of his hand against his heavily bandaged eye.

"You mean we've just let about ten Terminators loose into a new world." John deadpanned.

"Yes," The sky pirate replied, levering himself to his feet using the cave wall as an aid. Water pooled on the crystalline shelves, clean enough to drink, and he dipped his fingers in the cool liquid, sipping from the palm of his hand. It eased the burning in the back of his throat ever so slightly, but he knew what he really needed was not water. "I daresay that, before we start hunting Terminators, we had best take care of ourselves. The Sochen Cave Palace is not where you want to be staying for an extended time."

Balthier led them through a confusing maze of twists and turns, constantly evading huge, toad-like creatures and impish looking creatures. He would have taken them to Old Archades through the Palace, but had the feeling that multitudes of Headless Giants were not what John and the other humans wanted to see right now. Finally, just as they were about to emerge into the Tchita uplands, there was the unavoidable problem of a few Zombie Warriors wandering just short of the exit. However, many of the zombies now resembled torn corpses in various stages of being shattered by gunfire. Something had passed through here before them. One zombie groaned through rotted vocal cords from where it was a little more than a splatter, a sparking, mechanical arm nearby.

"A Terminator came here, no doubt about it." Barnes said picking up the arm, then tossing it aside in disgust. John nodded, but his agreeable face swiftly changed to terror when the zombie creature rose from the ground and lunged for Barnes, its mouth open in a grotesque, toothy howl. Blair knocked him out of the way, grabbing its arm and twisting it to lever it to its knees, but screamed in disgust when its entire arm came off with a horrible squelch. The zombie staggered slightly, but kept going, blood spurting from its shoulder.

"Really, must I do everything around here?" Balthier asked, using Fomalhaut to shoot the undead warrior in the head. The force of the shot exploded its brain, splattering gooey grey matter everywhere. Just for good measure, he plunged his fingers through the decaying mass of ancient flesh under the creature's breastbone and wrenched its shriveled heart out. The zombie collapsed, and this time, did not get up. The smell of rotting brains was disgusting, and John gagged.

"I need air…" he gasped, staggering toward the entrance, and emerged into an almost alien landscape. Strange winged serpents slithered through the grass, where they hunted for food and were hunted by Couerls in turn. Balthier emerged behind him, narrowing his eye against the sunshine. He nearly tripped on the shredded body of a Terminator, deep claw marks gouging its metal breastplate. The machine's arm was missing.

"I think we know what became of that Terminator." Marcus remarked, kicking the thing's head with enough force to dent it. Blair cheered.

"One down, nine to go! And we don't even know where they went!" she said.

"The worst part is, most likely they're learning how to cope to their new environment. The last Terminator is going to be the hardest to kill." Kyle said glumly.

"They will find several unexpected twists coming their way, then. Ivalice is full of strange things that muddle machines like them." Balthier grinned viciously. "However, we won't stand a chance unless we find my wise and faithful partner, Fran."

"Is she like you?" John asked, cocking his head.

"Only in profession. Other than that, we are as different as apples and carrots, my dear Fran and I." the pirate replied.

"I see."

They trekked across the Tchita Uplands, until Balthier found a Gate Crystal. He quickly envisioned Tsenoble, touching a glowing Teleport Stone to the crystal's surface, and (with no small amount of discomfort on the part of the Resistance members) they came tumbling into the streets of Archades.

The place was an uproar, with soldiers running everywhere and shouting orders. None of them even noticed the criminal standing in their midst until Balthier tapped one on his metal shoulder. "What's all this ruckus?"

"None of your business! That's the military's business, and ours alone!" the soldier replied rudely. The pirate snorted, neatly catching the man about the back and slinging his arm about the Imperial's shoulders.

"Boy, do you know who you're talking to?" Balthier purred lazily, a twisted smirk dancing on his face.

"Get your hands off me! Who are you? What makes you think you can—" the soldier meant to shake the sky pirate's arm off, but Balthier's grip was like a vice on his shoulder.

"I'm Balthier bloody _Bunansa_, you stupid oaf. And I am getting very, _very_ annoyed. I would not like to expel my mean temper upon my comrades now, you see, but you, on the other hand, are a perfect man upon for me to dispose of my wrath. So, you can choose to tell us what is going on, after which I will let you go, or you can keep mum, after which you will _most definitely be sorry._"

"You— you're _the _Balthier, the one who stopped _Bahamut_ and fought in the Nethicite Wars? The Pirate King of Ivalice?" the soldier squeaked, his voice rising several octaves. Balthier gave him a chilling smile, a glittering fang poking pass his lip.

"The same."

"I'm so, so, _so_ sorry, my lord!" the soldier barked, immediately snapping to attention. "A small band of strange creatures have broken into the Imperial palace, and we cannot bring them down!"

"Describe them." John commanded.

"Three armored skeletons made of metal, armed with guns of the like we have never seen." The soldier promptly replied. "The guns fire continuously, and they do not need to stop to reload their weapons. While we can deal damage, our gunmen and mages get killed too quickly before we can get enough shots in to do anything lasting."

"There's three of the Terminators right there! I say we get 'em!" Barnes said, but Balthier had one more question.

"Soldier, is Larsa safe?"

"When the monsters entered the Palace, the Emperor was engaged in conference with a Viera in his private office."

Balthier's face, already pale, immediately drained of all its remaining color. There was only one Viera who could get an instant conference with the Emperor of the Archadian Empire: "_Fran."_ He whispered.

"Your partner?" Blair asked, and he nodded.

"We _must_ get into the palace, quickly!" Balthier said, already running toward the sky cab station. A cab was there, but the driver was absent, most likely laying low somewhere until the hubbub subsided. The pirate quickly hotwired the ship, ripping off the system cover with terrifying ease in order to get at the control panel. He opened the door to the cab's interior, motioning for John and his team to get in. Kyle, the last in line, had barely gotten both feet over the threshold before Balthier floored the accelerator, throwing everybody toward the back of the ship. "You might want to buckle up, everybody— this could get quite hair-raising," he said over the intercom.

"You're insane! You're f—" the antiquated engine's guttural roar at that moment drowned out the rest of Kyle's expletive—"insane! You're going to get us all killed, pirate! You're lucky Marcus didn't fall on anyone!"

"Hey, you callin' me fat, Reese?" Marcus could be heard saying over the speaker. Balthier chuckled as he hooked the link to a small side bar so that the line remained open, but almost immediately turned serious again.

"Those mechanical menaces have broken into the palace where not only my irreplaceable partner is, but also the last of my original friends. You guys are experienced at bringing down Terminators, yes?" he asked, taking a corner at high speeds. Several loud thumps were heard in the passenger hold.

The statement was met with a chorus of agreements and groans. "You work on destroying those Terminators— I'll get Fran and Larsa to safety."

"Why can't you destroy them using lightning bolts like you did in LA?" John asked. "It seems that would be the easiest."

"Mist has a habit of changing things not particularly agreeable with it. Who knows what kind of horrible creatures those Terminators have become? Thunder might not work on them anymore." Balthier shrugged. "We're entering the Palace airspace now. The security measures are going to very high— things are going to get dicey!"

At that moment, the outside communications speaker crackled into life. "This is the _Loki_ to unidentified sky cab. Remove yourself from the Palace airspace immediately."

"I bloody well will not!" Balthier took the ship into a steep dive just as a warning shot exploded nearby. "Firing on the leading man? Flaming bad show, eh?"

"Remove yourselves at once, or we _will_ drop you!" a more imperious voice said. Ah, this was a voice he knew quite well.

"Ah, Judge Magister Freyk! I trust you remember me?"

"Balthier Bunansa, you impudent dog! Of course, I would remember who pushed me into that pile of chocobo droppings when you and your Viera consort were fleeing from the Aegis Crystal heist in the tomb of the ancient royalty! You better pray I am merciful enough to give her your bones pried apart from the molten ball of metal I'm going to turn your vessel into!" the Judge, most recently promote to Judge Magister, screamed into the line, venom dripping from his every syllable.

"Yes, I remember how hard it is to clean and repair good armor. I remember your grandfather from my days in the Judiciary. He gave me a bet to ride a Sleipnir. The thing bucked me off into a Dynast Cactus and broke my armor and my arm with its spikes, if I recall. I think I might still have cactus juice in it." Balthier said with faked sympathy, circling the Palace Tower, closer and closer.

"Get away from the Tower, _now_, Bunansa. I mean it." Freyk said flatly. "I will not hesitate to shoot you out of the sky."

"Oh, I doubt that." The pirate replied, docking the sky cab by a large balcony and opening the doors, allowing five very ill looking Resistance members to stagger out. "Because I don't think you'd let me do this if you were that set on blasting me into little bits."

"_Bunansa!_" the Judge Magister roared, and Balthier leaped from the cockpit just as the ship exploded into a ball of flame.

"So you do have the guts to do it. Pity, you missed!" he wagged his finger at the giant warship.

"Are you trying to get us killed? He'll blow up the tower next!" Marcus snapped, grabbing Balthier and dragging him inside. There, John was already beginning to navigate the interior corridors, following the sound of gunfire and screams.

* * *

What they saw in the throne room was truly terrifying to see. The three terminators had been fused together in such a way that the creature had no legs, simply a multitude of scintillating, undulating coils of wires and metal that supported an upper body that had three heads fused together, two facing to the sides and one facing forward. The heads on the sides had no eyes— smooth, unaltered sheets of metal had replaced where their eyes had been, and their mouths were sewn shut with some kind of wire. The head on the front had one, large glowing red eye, and when it brought this lens to bear upon one of the soldiers, he burst into flames. One arm was a broken mass of whirring blades and gears, already flecked with blood and other things Balthier would rather not think about; the other arm was a fusion of the three machine guns that the Terminators had brought with them, and these mowed down the poor Imperial soldiers in swathes.

Marcus was the first to take action, dodging the whipping tentacles of the Terminator in order to begin scaling its back, digging his mechanical hand into any crevasse he could find. Blair followed soon after, firing at the gears allowing the machine to move. Kyle concentrated on throwing grenades at the robot's weak spots, but they bounced harmlessly off its metal coating.

In the meantime, Balthier dashed toward the far end of the room, where two familiar figures huddled.

"Fran!" he cried, skidding to a halt in front of her. "Are you alright?"

"Ffamran!" the Viera gasped, her eyes wide. In an instant, she was on her feet, striding toward him. He did not expect what happened next— she delivered unto his left cheek a very solid slap.

"What did I do?" he wailed, holding an affronted hand to his reddening cheek.

"Every time that you come back from one of your adventures, you look even worse than when you left me!" Fran said, her voice rising. The woman looked close to hysterics, her fur bristling, ears laid back. Balthier knew it was being so close to the battlefield that set her on edge, and gathered her to him, allowing her to take comfort in his cold arms. Slowly, her ragged breathing calmed as he stroked the back of her ears, trailed his icy fingers along her jaw, brushed his lips over her collarbone. But still, her hands clenched convulsively on the back of his vest, and he could almost feel her eyes riveted on the battle raging behind him. She jumped, almost ripping some chunks out of his flesh with her claws, when Barnes managed to load his rocket launcher and pummeled the Terminator with it, knocking it sideways with a deafening crash. As it was, several black blood stains now marred his white shirt.

"Easy, my dear." He breathed, but Fran began to shake again.

"The Mist seethes about its core." She moaned, raising her head to look at him. "It must be stopped. What made it?"

"Humes of another world did, a long time ago, not knowing what they did until it turned upon them and slaughtered them en masse. And now, the Humes struggle in their world to end the tyranny of the machines." He explained, as much to distract her as himself. He could feel her wildly thumping heart, hear the rush of her blood through her veins, and even smell her pain and fear. At that moment, the middle head of the machine opened its mouth and poured out a stream of Mist, incinerating more soldiers where they stood. They screamed as their armor fused to their bodies, collapsing to the ground and rising again to turn on their living comrades. "Calm, Fran." Balthier murmured again as he felt her heart race. Finally, deciding there was nothing he could do to keep her from going berserk on Mist Rage, he bit her.

It took a moment for his venom to work, but eventually, her pulse began to slow, her eyes to droop, her hands to loosen, and she fell against him, limp.

"Ffamran, I'm sorry." She whispered thickly. "I couldn't save Larsa."

"He's dead, then?"

"Forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive— if he could not be saved, he could not be saved." Balthier licked a few drops of blood from where they traced down her long, swan-like neck, activating the power rune on his back. As he began to regenerate his eye, Fran raised her hand to his cheek, putting it over the red mark where she'd slapped him.

"Humes are such power needy creatures. They would rape the Mist and the Wood and Ivalice herself to satisfy their lust." She said, her mind clearly wandering. Balthier humored her.

"Good thing I am not Hume, then." He said, unwrapping the bandages from around his eye. Strange, clear liquid gushed out of the socket, making it appear as if he were crying.

"But you were, once, not so long ago. And your father passed the lust of nethicite and magicite on to you. Do you know what that Tiara was?"

"Nethicite?"

"Yes. A tiny part of the Sun-Cryst itself." Fran was so far gone under the influence of the anesthetic spreading through her system that she did not even jump when a soldier landed next to them, his chest sliced open by the monster's blade arm.

"Isn't that fascinating? We could get a fair price out of that."

"I hid it."

"Damn."

"Don't leave me again, Ffamran. I know why you bit me— you're going to make me sleep, and then leave." Fran's eyelids began to droop.

"Do you really have so little faith in me? Really, I'm hurt." Balthier pouted, and Fran laughed once, before falling deep asleep.

* * *

Marcus finally found his way into the machine's control center, ripping aside cords and metal plates until he reached a triumvirate of three nuclear power cells. Working his way into the cramped chamber, the cyborg began unplugging them, ever so gently to avoid a fiery explosion. The wires he'd torn aside suddenly came to life, spitting electricity at him that made his fingers jitter and his vision cut in and out.

"Damn it, knock it off!" he roared, swatting at them, but they were like snakes, avoiding his blows with alarming speed. One plunged itself into his arm, and the limb went into uncontrollable spasms, his fingers a desperate blur. Reaching his other hand over, he yanked the thing out, growling in pain as synthetic blood spurted out of the hole.

Abandoning caution, the cyborg grabbed all the wires he could see under the power cells, ignoring the warning flashing before his sensors that doing so might cause extreme damage to his surroundings, and yanked.

* * *

The machine collapsed to the ground, tentacles flailing, its single eye rolling madly, melting stone, setting tapestries and banners ablaze. Its gun arm went wild, shooting crazily in every direction, and John dove behind a chunk of fallen marble before he could be filled with holes.

Finally, with a squeal, the machine's glowing red eye faded.

Blair emerged from where she'd taken cover with Barnes behind a chunk of debris, coughing. "Marcus?" she called, making her way toward the fallen giant. There was no reply, no warm, rough voice returning her call.

"Marcus!" she screamed into the deafening silence. "Marcus!"


	5. Aftermath

Thanks to **ElTangoDeRoxanne **and **emeraldonyxdragon**, my super faithful reviewers! No long intros because once again, I'm tired.

* * *

John desperately pulled at a sheet of metal that had fallen over the entrance to the machine's core, digging his fingers into the rim until they began to bleed. Blair jammed the barrel of her gun into a crack, attempting to lever the sheet off, but it wasn't enough. Finally, Barnes fixed one more rocket into his launcher and aimed at the metal sheet.

"Stand back, ladies n' gents," he warned, before blasting the metal out of the way. Before the smoke had even cleared, Blair and Kyle were already climbing through the hole, yelling Marcus's name.

The cyborg was tangled in a mess of sparking wires, blood dripping from a long gash in his head. A scratched piece of his metal skull glimmered in the poorly lit room, but luckily, it did not appear to be broken. He was unconscious, but breathing.

"Thank God…" Blair breathed, trailing a hand down the side of his warm face. "He's only knocked out. We just need to get him out of those wires." She explained to the others. John easily sawed through the cables with his knife, insulated from shock by the rubber-coated handle, and Marcus dropped to the ground with a crash. It took all four of them to lift Marcus from the ground and drag him out of the machine, but when they finally managed it, they emerged into a hall filled with chaos.

"I think it would be best if we quit this place while we still can." Balthier strode up to them, carrying a beautiful, sleeping woman with coffee colored skin and silvery white hair in his arms. "The emperor is dead, and I don't want to get caught up in the storm that's going to follow." John did not miss the sad look in the sky pirate's eyes as he looked toward the far end of the hall, where several men in extravagant armor stood over a body on the ground.

"We didn't make it in time?" he asked. Balthier shook his head.

"He took five bullets to the chest. Not even Fran's skill can heal something like that." He moved quickly, choosing the halls where the least amount of people milled about. "We just let ten machines into Ivalice, and already, the Archadian Empire, strongest of all the nations in the world, has been brought to its knees. I am amazed how long you've held out. Earth has been overrun, and yet you survive."

"This is how it was when Judgment Day happened. Lucky for you, there's only six Terminators left, and they ain't buildin' any more of 'em." Kyle said.

"If every battle is going to be like this, Judgment Day might as well have happened. The Mist does terrible things to outside technology and magick; you saw what those things became! Six Terminators can become the worst threat Ivalice has ever seen."

"Not as long as we're here. The Resistance fights the machines no matter where we are— if another world needs our help, we will give it." Blair told him, struggling somewhat under Marcus's deadweight.

"You remind me of Queen Ashe, a little bit." The sky pirate glanced back at them, humor dancing under the veil of sadness over his eyes. He just seemed to realize then the burden the four soldiers behind him bore, and stopped. "Would you like some help?"

"Yes!" Kyle heaved Marcus's arm off his shoulder, throwing the insensate man to the ground. "Oh my gawd, he's heavy! I need to lodge a complaint against Skynet. 'Dear Skynet. Please make your Terminator design lighter. Thanks a bunch, Kyle Reese.'"

Barnes snorted. "The only complaints they'll listen to are lead bullets."

At that moment, Marcus, revived by a Raise spell, opened his eyes. "Were you callin' me fat again, Reese?" he asked.

"Go get 'im, metal man!" Blair cheered as Marcus heaved himself to his feet and tackled the young demolitions expert.

"Get off me, get off me!" Kyle screamed. Balthier smiled serenely before continuing his walk out of the palace and toward the Archades Aerodrome.

"What's going to happen now that the Emperor's dead?" John asked when he caught up to the pirate.

"Larsa had two heirs, twin brothers by the name of Hugin Cepherius Solidor and Munin Leonid Solidor. Both are still alive, but unlike their uncle, who was killed in the Nethicite War seventy years ago, they are both very peaceable. This is going to be a very interesting time to live through indeed…" Balthier trailed off meditatively as he stepped into the street. Rain poured down, and once again, he lifted his face to the cold drops, letting them run down his face and become tears he could not shed. The long years were bearing down upon him indeed.

"You expect to live long enough to see all this happen?" John raised his eyebrows.

"Why not?" Balthier's shoes splashed through puddles water sloshing inside of them, and he vaguely wondered why, eighty years ago, he had decided to wear such impractical footwear.

When they reached the Aerodrome, they were soaked. All flights in and out of the city had been stopped, the building mostly abandoned. Balthier paused on the threshold of the building, water pooling on the floor, before turning around and staring back at the city that had reared him.

"What's the matter?" Marcus asked, squinting at the distant Palace tower. Smoke still rose into the dark sky, a reminder of the day's tragic event.

"Ivalice is changing, even though I am not. Fran and I are islands under threat of submersion by the relentless tide. Perhaps… perhaps it was wrong of us to pursue immortality." Balthier whispered.

"You are regretting our choice?" Fran opened her eyes, looking up at him as she voiced her question. Her partner set her back on her feet. "Larsa would want you to move on, too. He told me to tell you this when you got back: make new friends, Ffamran."

"Wow. Thanks, Larsa. I didn't know we meant so little to you."

"Does he mean so little to you? Did you only visit him so you could keep living in the past? We are not islands sinking below the sea— we are ships tossed about on a stormy ocean. With time and care, we can overcome all obstacles. You simply need to lift your anchor." Fran walked toward the hangar, leaving wet footprints in her wake.

Marcus's gaze switched back and forth between the two pirates. "I'm not going to pretend I understood any of that," he said, scratching the back of his head. There was a wrinkled scar there where he had ripped the chip Skynet used to control him, and he winced as his fingers agitated the old wound. "But I'm just gonna say, you've got problems, Balthier."

* * *

The _Strahl _made a graceful lift off into the iron-grey clouds, rising above the cloud layer and into calmer, sunnier skies. Marcus was in the kitchen, eating to regain his lost strength, and Blair was with him, sipping some tea with mint syrup out of a chipped mug to keep out the chill. Barnes lowered himself from his usual machine hating standards to sit with his friend and the cyborg in order to drink some warm coffee. John remained in the cockpit with the two sky pirates, but he was shivering in the _Strahl_'s cold environs.

"You should turn on the heater, Balthier. Not all of us are as resistant to extreme temperatures like you are." Fran nudged him, breaking him out of his almost trance like daze.

"Right." Balthier pressed a few buttons, and the heater turned on with a hum.

"Do you even know where you're going?" John asked.

"Yes. Marcus said that he picked up the signature of two Terminators to the West, and three more to the south. One to the far west vanished recently. We are guessing it was destroyed in the Jagd Yensa." Fran said when Balthier did not answer. His eyes had glazed over again, and she shook her head. "Go to sleep, Balthier. I understand that the last thing you wanted to see when you came back from the war-torn Earth was the death of Larsa, but weren't you just waiting for it all along?"

"Sure." Balthier answered blankly, stumbling to his feet and walking out. They heard the door to the cabin he and Fran shared slam, and then a muted thump, and after that— silence. Fran slid into his seat, shivering slightly as her bare skin met the cold material, and wrapped her hands around the joystick. John took the seat next to her.

"What's wrong with him?"

"He is hungry, tired, injured, and grief-stricken. It strains his mind and body to the limits of his humanity," the Viera replied, realizing that they were slightly off course and correcting their heading to Nabradia. "It makes his personality unstable."

"A little rest ought to do him some good, then." John stared at the controls before him. Blair would most likely go crazy and beg Fran to let her fly the ship, were she here at the moment. In fact, speak of the devil, and he shall arrive, the crazy pilot herself had just come into the cockpit.

"Can I fly her?" Blair asked, just as John predicted. Marcus followed her inside.

"Careful, Fran. Blair might take us crashing down into the swamp below." He laughed. Blair thumped him on the stomach, but he only laughed even more when she cursed, shaking her bruised knuckles.

"Go ahead. You are a pilot, yes?" Fran asked. Blair blinked.

"How did you know?" she asked. The Viera flicked an ear, and the young woman's eyes followed the motion with eager fascination.

"You smell of the clean sky." Fran said simply, rising to her feet and leaving. Blair shared a look with Marcus, who smirked at her before shifting a large trunk filled with vials strange liquids, tufty red and gold feathers, and scummy piles of strange green-grey herbs in order to sit in the seat it was occupying. She took the control stick in her hands, feeling the low jitter of the ship through the mechanism. The pilot could almost sense the ship's frustration, that she was meant to go much faster, but was being held back. There was a glowing green button on the dash. Without thinking, Blair pressed it.

It was just like when she flew her A-10 Warthog, but so much faster. The world whipped by unimaginably quickly as the _Strahl_ boomed over it, speeding faster than sound.

In Balthier's cabin, there was a loud thump and a resounding wail of surprise. "FRAN!" Balthier squalled. "Who the hell is piloting my ship? I thought it was on autopilot!" They could hear Fran giggling, apparently uncharacteristically, for the next thing they heard was, "Fran, I am seriously reconsidering our partnership. I mean it—no! I _mean_ it! By the Gods and the Scions, if there is so much as a scrap on my baby I'll—" Blair took the ship into a sharp corkscrew.

"You'll live." They heard Fran say. "You always do, my little undead child."

"_Fran!_" There was a loud bang, followed by Balthier scrambling into the cockpit. They noticed that his eyes, which were wide with terror, were back to their remarkable shade of honey brown. The Viera followed him back into the cockpit, lacing her hands across his chest as he hurriedly checked maps, bearings, and statistics, anything he could get his hands on.

A loud beeping went off, and Blair quickly powered the Overdrive down, slowing the ship. Balthier relaxed instantly, staring at the radar under his fingers.

"You're even scarier than Vaan, I swear. We've missed our destination by about twenty leagues. Congratulations, Blair, you've piloted us all the way to the river Nebra." He glared at the readings. Kyle came into the cockpit at that moment, white faced and shaking and covered in water. "Okay, was it Army Girl at the helm? Alright, that explains a few things. Don't do that when I'm in the shower."

"What was that beeping?" Blair asked.

"The alarm telling us we overshot." Balthier replied, sinking into a chair with a sigh, then leaping up again with an explosive swear as it turned out the chair was occupied by a bundle of cactaur needles.

"It's okay. Those Terminators don't seem like they're going anywhere at the moment. We have time to relax." Marcus said.

John nodded. "We might as well. I have a feeling things are about to get a helluva lot harder."

* * *

Fran lay with Balthier on the soft sands by the river, staring up at the stars. John, Marcus, Blair, Kyle, and Barnes were attempting to light a fire, but failing with the limited supplies they possessed. In the end, Fran cast a Fire spell, setting the dry wood ablaze.

In the course of half a century, the area around the River Nebra did not seem to have changed a whole lot.

"It seems like only yesterday you were trying to drown Vaan in the Nebra, doesn't it, Balthier?" Fran asked.

"Why would you do that?" Kyle asked, warming his hands over the fire.

"Hm… as I recall, it was in the days when I still turned into a skeleton in the moonlight." Balthier grinned at the memory. "Vaan thought it was really scary at first, but then realized that there were certain… benefits… to having all ones bones exposed."

"He pulled out one of Balthier's ribs and used it to play fetch with a young boy's pet wolf pup." Fran explained.

"Of course, I wasn't happy that my rib was missing, so I chased Vaan down. And then I found out that the wolf ate it." Balthier finished bitterly. John blinked.

"Impossible. When Kate did her physical on you, you had all your ribs."

"I got better." Balthier said wanly.

"We'd best go to sleep soon. Tomorrow, we have to fly back to that Nabreus Deadland place we saw from the air, and I want to be at full strength for the fight." Barnes said.

"Party pooper." Blair stuck her tongue out at him.

As they rolled over to go back to sleep, no one noticed the lights that flashed from _Bahamut_'s spire, like ominous fireflies in the night.

* * *

Yay


	6. Vengeful Souls

Thanks to **ElTangoDeRoxanne** and **emeraldonyxdragon**! Sorry, this chapter is short!

* * *

Marcus rolled over, his hand falling to rest on Blair's. She was so soft and warm; if he had to choose a word, he would have to say she was snuggly. He rolled even closer, smiling, and held her tightly to him, his hands curling about her thin shoulders. Cold fingers touched his shoulder, and he frowned. Who dared interrupt his moment with Blair? The fingers prodded him again, more urgently. He refused to move, tightening his grip on her.

Blair growled, a deep rumbling noise. Wait. Blair growled?

Marcus opened his eyes and realized he was _not_,in fact, holding Blair, and was, in fact, hugging the furry leg of a huge crocodile-like creature. The hand that had been poking him belonged to Balthier the sky pirate, his undead body as cold as ever, and his face was one of mixed amusement and horror. Barnes, Blair, Kyle, and John were already awake, and had their guns trained on the hard carapace that covered the gator's actual head. Fran nocked an arrow to her bow, ready to release it at any moment should the situation get hairy. Which, considering that their opponent was a wooly gator, the situation already was.

"Very, very slowly, let go of the gator's leg." Balthier instructed. "Whatever you do, _do not pull out any hair_." Marcus began to release his grip on the wooly gator's leg, sweat making the white fur stick to his palms. He forced his breath in and out evenly. If he still had his heart, he was sure it would be hammering, but John's heart (which was actually Marcus's) was probably pounding hard enough for the both of them. Just as he began to move, the wooly gator took a few stomping steps forward, and a huge hank of wool caught under Marcus's foot came ripping out.

The wooly gator gave an angry roar and stampeded, trampling the cyborg into the sand underfoot and ramming into the sky pirate. Its long nose caught him square in the gut, and with a toss of its head, sent him flying into a nearby bush. For reasons as of yet unknown, when he landed, Balthier gave an agonized yell. Fran managed to let her arrow loose before she dove for cover out of the gator's path, but the arrow bounced off the creature's protective mask. Barnes, tripping and stumbling in the sand, dragged Kyle to safety, just as John pointed his gun toward one of the gator's gaping eyeholes and fired.

Blood sprayed everywhere, dying the animal's white fleece red, and it collapsed to the ground, legs flailing. It shuddered once, then went still. John smirked.

"Take that, you sonofa—"

"Marcus! Are you alright?" Blair helped Marcus up from where he had been pressed into the ground by the gator's gigantic feet.

"I feel like I got hit by a truck." He said dizzily. "I'm really starting to hate water creatures. They just don't agree with me."

"Technically, hydrobots aren't creatures." Kyle pointed out.

Fran was already in the bushes, trying to help her partner, but her face was quickly coloring in the attempt to keep from laughing.

"It's not funny!" Balthier moaned. "Help me up—ugh!" his face contorted in pain again. Kyle wandered over to see what was happening, and what he saw made him double up with laughter.

The sky pirate's brief flight had been cut short, broken by the desert bush and cushioned by an irate cactaur. Its long spines had penetrated deep into his back and legs, and the area in between as well. "What's going to happen next? First the bundle of needles, now the cactaur. Am I going to be ambushed by a falling Morning Star Mace?" Balthier asked as John courteously helped him to his feet. As soon as it was freed from its heavy burden, the cactaur leaped up and began slapping Balthier's shins with its prickly little arms. Sadly, his shin guards were performing their duty of guarding his shins, and its needles were turned aside by the metal plates. Balthier, annoyed, gave the dancing cactus a hefty kick, and it lay in the sands, stunned.

"Let's get moving before any other manner of spiny objects decide to impale me today," he grumped, plucking the cactaur's needles from his posterior while Fran pulled prickles from his back by the handful.

* * *

Balthier parked the _Strahl_ above a Teleport Stone in the Nabreus Deadlands, just above the fog layer. The mist was so thick; it looked as if the airship was floating over a heaving white sea. There was golden Mist as well, reflecting phantom images at them, but its normally vibrant green-blue and gold hues seemed muted. A grey shroud had descended over everything, dampening the party's spirits, and after a few failed attempts at light conversation, they simply ceased talking all together. Marcus led the way, stating that he'd picked up the signal of the two Terminators. Blair, normally as brave as a lioness, clung to his arm, eyes wide as she stared at the skeleton warriors, banshees, and ghouls wandering the desolate marsh.

"I am glad there is not enough Mist on Earth to allow the dead to come back." Kyle whispered as a Skeleton Warrior watched them go by, red light burning in its eye sockets. "Think how many there'd be!"

"Why don't they attack?" Barnes whispered, fingering his gun. A small entourage of zombies was following them at a distance, but they would not get within ten feet of the group before wandering away. "On earth, zombies always go 'round groaning for brains. In all the books I read, they like nothin' more than rippin' people limb from limb."

"And so they do." Fran replied, her ears swiveling back and forth, straining for any signs of danger. "I, too, think it is strange, but I would not question our good luck. I think it is likely because of Balthier's presence—he is an undead himself, and since we are with him, we are left alone."

"You travel with a zombie?" Barnes looked horrified; he could almost imagine Balthier's face turning ash grey and green, rotting, decaying, flesh slithering to the ground, muscles, tendons, and bones exposed to the air, slime oozing from lacerated wounds.

"He was Hume, once." Fran smiled affectionately. "He still is capable of feeling most of the emotions granted the sentient races of Ivalice. Balthier finds difficulty in expressing his sadness, fears, and extreme happiness, but he can and does. You saw it earlier."

Barnes shook his head. "I feel the same way 'bout Balthier as I do Marcus. Marcus was a human too, but now he's a machine. All machines are the same, no matter how they act—they're all killin' weapons. They ain't the same as us, I feel, and every second, Marcus could get taken over by Skynet and kill us, that's how I see it."

Fran glanced at him sidelong. "But if you feel the same way about Balthier as you do Marcus, do you see Balthier attempting to rip chunks of us?" Barnes shook his head.

"But I got that fear, deep down. It's kept me alive throughout Judgment Day, and it'll keep me alive in the future."

"I pray you will live to see the end of your war." Fran said softly.

* * *

Marcus led them through the marshes, though they had a few incidents involving ravenous Baknamy, but stopped when the path led them through an ominous building rising out of the Deadlands.

"The Necrohal of Nabudis…" Balthier breathed. "Why, of all places, have those machines chosen the deepest hellhole of all to hide in?"

"Beats me. What's so bad about this place? It's just a ruin." Blair shrugged. Fran stepped forward, her ears erect.

"There is darkness there that can be felt. Not only is it inhabited by the reanimated corpses of those who perished at the start of the Nethicite War during the conquest of Nabradia and Dalmasca, but ghosts have come to haunt the scene of the battle for Nabudis." She said. "Those who are wise would turn back."

"We cannot go back." John snapped. "We are cut off from all support from Earth, and we risk letting your world get destroyed as well if we leave. We go forward." He stalked into the darkness, Mist swirling in his wake.

The inside of the Necrohol was pitch black. Water dripped from the ceiling and pooled in collapsed staircases. Squeaking gargoyles wove back and forth between the pillars, and banshees screamed, loud enough to be heard several corridors away. John instantly regretted entering, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

"Marcus, lead the way." He whispered, and they crept forward, following the cyborg. Eventually, they came to a large door, three medallions stuck in the stone. Marcus made to push it open, but Balthier stopped him.

"Allow me. No matter what, I can't die." He murmured, glancing toward Fran. He eased it open, the hinges squealing horribly, and peered into the gloom.

Silence, but for the sound of their breath.

"Did I imagine that I sensed them?" Marcus asked quietly.

"It could have been the Mist…" John speculated, before Fran shouted:

"_Move!_"

Several bullets imbedded themselves in the wall just above Kyle's head. The young man yelped, diving toward the ground as the wall was peppered with several more bullets.

"What the—?" he gasped. The two Terminators stalked toward them, one armed with a gun, the other with an ornate sword. The one with the sword cranked open its jaws, and began to speak in a sad, ugly drone.

"_Ashe…_" Balthier's eyes widened. "_Ashe… I'm so sorry I didn't make it…_"

"No way…" he whispered.

"_I won't rest until I kill him… the one who killed our father, orchestrated our defeat…_"

"Rasler... I don't believe it, it's possessed by the ghost of Rasler." Balthier backed away from the approaching Terminator. An oversoul could be seen hovering just above it, connected by threads hanging from its ragged cloak.

"_I took an oath, Ashe. I took an oath so I could stay on Ivalice with you and keep you company. But then I couldn't leave… Ashe… It's so dark, Ashe… They took you away, didn't they? Damn them… Damn the Archadians… Damn you, Vayne!_" The Terminator swung at them, sword biting deep into the ground. John fired a volley of shots before the second Terminator almost plugged him.

"Fran! Use Holy!" Balthier shouted, skipping out of the way of another sword swing. She obliged, the white light filling the chamber. Ignoring the sting as the Holy magick reacted with his undead flesh, Balthier attempted to go for the sweet spot at the back of the Terminator's neck. He was surprised when the oversoul, angered by the use of magick and blinded by pain, lashed out at him, impaling him on one of its black, curling claws. He struggled to get free, but the monster's claw had gotten jammed and twisted between his ribs, and he was stuck. "Brilliant," he snapped, drawing his dagger and stabbing at the oversoul's body.

"_Vayne must die. He took you away, didn't he, Ashe… he's keeping us apart, and keeping me in the dark. Come, Ashe, please… show me to the light… it's cold and I can't see!"_ Rasler, or rather his vengeful ghost, screamed. Kyle thrust a grenade into its open mouth, but the Terminator kept coming, powered by the oversoul's fearsome power even though it had been decapitated. John and Barnes, working together, brought down the other Terminator, but the wreckage also continued to move, metal shavings whizzing everywhere. Marcus hissed as one lodged itself in his back before lifting a huge rock and flinging it at the Terminator the oversoul controlled.

Meanwhile, Balthier realized what must have happened—Rasler's spirit had been trapped by his oath for so long that he could no longer depart. He did not know that both Vayne and Ashe had already passed. Therefore, the pirate did the only thing that he knew could help the soul. He dragged himself closer to the smaller skull imbedded in the oversoul's forehead, groaning as he felt the claw sliding about under his ribcage.

"Rasler!" he shouted, reaching out and grabbing the skull. "Rasler! Vayne is dead! You're free!" A second claw smashed through his back, and he snarled in pain. "Listen to me!" he gasped.

"_Ashe… Ashe…_" the creature moaned, and so did Balthier as Fran used another Holy spell almost on top of him. "_Ashe… please, show me the light then, if Vayne has died… I want to get out…_"

Balthier shook his head. "Ashe is dead, and has been so for over twenty years. Let go of your hate, and you can see her again. Would you rather she saw you as you are now?"

"_Ashe…_" the oversoul shook, its form changing, claws shrinking into human hands, face changing to that of a young man. Balthier dropped to the ground as its claws slid out of him, and Fran caught him before he fell completely, her hands glowing with healing magick.

"_Thank you_…" The ghost of Rasler faded, rising into the darkness, and the last Terminator collapsed under a barrage of gunfire.

Fran looked to Barnes. "Hate is a terrible thing… enough vengeance, and a soul will never find peace."

* * *

Yays.


	7. Ripped Wings

Longest chapter in a while… and my muse came back! Yay! As usual, thanks to **ElTangoDeRoxanne** and **emeraldonyxdragon**. I love you guys so muuuuuch!

Disclamer: I own nothing.

* * *

Balthier climbed shakily to his feet, placing a hand against his ribs. There were several large rips in his vest from the oversoul's claws, and his white shirt was filthy, black with his blood and green with slime.

"Three to go. Any idea of where they are?" Kyle asked Marcus. The small cyborg shook his head.

"I think the Mist is screwing with me. I can't sense them at all." He said, lowering his blue-grey eyes.

"Don't worry about it then. Stop bein' a machine and just be human for a while." Blair snuggled closer to his arms, and he smiled, leaning his chin on the top of her head.

"I suggest we leave before indulging in our human sides." Balthier said, turning back to look at them, a smile playing about the edge of his lips. "Unless you'd like to deal with this lot…" Baknamy were streaming into the hall, attracted by the sounds of battle. Kyle froze.

"We can't take down that many!" he gaped, a pipe bomb sliding out of his hands.

"We had best start running then." Fran said while casting Scathe, the spell blooming to life and incinerating anything in its way. In the aftermath, the party charged down the hall, not stopping until they had cleared the Necrohal and the yawning entrance was far behind.

Kyle sprawled on the muddy ground, panting, sweat pouring down his face. John chose the more dignified action of leaning against a tree, though his chest swelled like a bellows as he gulped air. Barnes polished his rocket launcher, hiding the fact that he, too, experienced discomfort. Marcus grinned. "Who's fat now? Looks like y'all need to work out some more."

"Shut it, metal man." Blair puffed. Fran shook out her hair, a feeble attempt at getting the stink of death from her hair.

"Balthier and I once ran from the bottom of the Pharos at Ridorana to the ninety-ninth floor. It was… unpleasant, to say in the least." She grimaced at the memory.

"I still had to breathe back then, remember?" Balthier picked at a string hanging from his shredded vest. "I was still human back then."

"That goes for both of us." Marcus shrugged. It was interesting to watch as they stood next to each other—one was the product of science and the material, the other the child of magic and the immaterial. And it showed; Marcus was there, solid, firm, and reassuring in his firmness. Balthier's form seemed to flicker as mist and Mist washed about him, insubstantial in the light when he had seemed so corporeal in the darkness inside the Necrohal. He blinked when he caught them staring, confused. Apparently, he was not aware of it, though Fran had noticed for some time.

"Is something…?" he began, but Fran shook her head again, taking his hand. The instant she touched him, he seemed _there_ again. In fact, he seemed so there as she dragged him away by his tattered shirt-sleeves, his scrabbling feet leaving deep imprints scouring the soil, that they wondered if they had imagined it.

They could not, however, have imagined what they saw when they returned to the _Strahl_. Several small Remoras had surrounded the ship, so many that they could not even see it, and in the distance, the Loki was roaring toward them over the wet, marshy steppes of the Nabreus Deadlands.

"Ah, Balthier Bunansa. Bad form to keep us waiting, you know." Judge Magister Freyk turned toward them, his heel grinding into the mud.

"What are you doing here?" Balthier's voice could have made frost form with the chilling level it reached.

"A good question," Freyk cleared his throat, drawing a scroll from where it was tucked in his belt. "Ffamran 'Balthier' Mid Bunansa Archades, you are under arrest for the performance of regicide, on the third day of the first month of His Majesty Hugin Cepherius Solidor's reign, year eight-hundred-three, Old Valendian."

"What happened to Munin?" Fran broke in. Freyk ignored her.

"In the name of the law, you will be tried—" a soldier approached, putting iron shackles about Balthier's wrists, cuffing them together. The sky pirate was so shocked by what he was hearing that he did not even attempt evasion. "—you have now been tried, and found guilty. Your sentence— death. You will be executed formally at the Palace in three days, along with your accomplices. Until then, you will be held in—"

"Did anyone ever tell you that you talked too much?" Blair blurted out. "I thought the military taught your types to be precise." That snapped Balthier out of his reverie.

"_Fran, plyndre!_" he shouted. Fran looked at him sharply.

"_Egentlige_?" she cocked her head.

"I'm quite serious. And take Marcus with you, Blair too if he won't leave her. He won't stand past the prisoner registration process. The nethicite they use to keep enough Mist gathering for spells will stop his heart cold and kill him." Fran nodded, tight lipped, before grabbing Marcus and Blair and bounding into the mist. "I suggest you follow her." Balthier murmured to the others. They vanished after her, but John stayed.

"I'm not leaving you!" he stated. "I'm not kidding! I won't leave a man behind!"

"Then stay." Balthier shrugged as another lesser judge clapped another pair of handcuffs about John's hands. "You should have left me behind. You might have been spared execution."

"Why didn't you run, you idiot?" John was all but yelling as they were led away toward the Loki.

"Someone has accused me of killing Larsa. I will not rest until I clear my name." Balthier answered.

"Stay in the area. The others might come back for that hunk of metal this deranged pirate calls an airship." Freyk said, and Balthier managed to catch a glimpse of the _Strahl_. What he saw made tears spring to his eyes for the first time in over half a century, glistening and dripping down his face.

The _Strahl_ was nothing more than a twisted metal skeleton, her ribs open to the sky, smoke pouring from a thousand holes in her hull. Her white paint was grey with ash, her smooth underbelly dented by sledgehammers. Flame belched out of the cockpit, and glass shattered under the heat, metal screeching as it caved in. The _Strahl_ was crying.

"_You bastard!_" Balthier screamed, a howl, a vicious war cry, and he jerked his cuffed hands from the soldier holding the chain, the links separating with a snap. He lunged at Freyk, savagery, pain, and anger pouring off him. There was a crash, and John closed his eyes, expecting to see Freyk's brains pouring out onto the muddy ground as Balthier smashed his head open using the sharp edge on the handcuffs, but was surprised when the pirate was sent sprawling, and Freyk remained standing, serene as a mountain. John blinked. Quick as a cat, the pirate twisted, back on his feet, and launched himself back at the Judge Magister. At the last moment, he vanished in a blur of speed, appearing behind him.

"I'm sorry— did I offend you in some way? Wait… you don't have feelings, you _monster._" Freyk laughed as he spun, landing a kick solidly in Balthier's gut with his sharply booted foot. The pirate was flung back, and he landed in a crouch, holding a hand to his stomach, where a nasty gash could be seen through his splayed fingers, panting as he glared at the judge. Suddenly, his eyes widened, and he vomited onto the ground. Blood, a disgusting mixture of red and black, spattered over his fingers and pooled around his shoes. He had fed— very recently, from the look of things, John decided. "How much of that is yours, I wonder? And how much of it belongs to all the myriad soldiers and humes you've killed over the years? How much of it belongs to your Viera plaything?" Freyk continued to taunt, and Balthier made to get up again, hatred building and spilling from his angry eyes, but sank back to the ground, coughing weakly, his knees unable to support him.

John was at his side in an instant, cautiously putting an arm around his shoulders. He pulled back when Balthier's head whipped around, and the pirate snarled at him, a blood curdling, spine chilling sound, but as he took in John's horror-stricken countenance, his eyes softened.

"Sorry…" he whispered, before falling unconscious.

"Nothing to be sorry about," John said gruffly, lifting the pirate to his feet. The man weighed far less than he looked, and it was easy to half drag, half carry him inside the ship before they were locked in the brig. Meanwhile, he could feel Freyk's eyes on them.

_I got you, Bunansa,_ his invisible eyes seemed to say. _Got you, got you, got you._

* * *

Inside the brig, it was completely dark, as the only light came from a tiny window slot that remained covered for most of the trip. John had put Balthier down upon a thin metal bench that he supposed was a bed, and hunkered down on the other one, hunched over to avoid brushing against the low ceiling.

The pirate was clearly uneasy, shifting often in his forced slumber. His breath was irregular, occasionally coming in quick, shaky bursts, other times, long and drawn out, what seemed like hours (though in reality, it was only minutes) in between. When those times struck, John found it eerie as he listened to the steady sound of his own breath going on and on in the darkness. It was almost as if he was alone. For a moment, he wondered what the room looked like to Balthier. Was it like the monster movies with vampires that he'd seen on Earth? John glanced toward the bunk where he hoped the pirate still was. A shuddering breath— he was still there.

In the movies, the vampires saw their victim as a burning red figure in a bright room with no light, full of hot, fresh blood, and heard their heartbeat, loud, loud, loud in their ears. John's own heart tripped briefly in terror— he might be that red victim in the movies.

Balthier reared back into consciousness with a strangled cry followed by a loud bang as he slammed his head into the low ceiling. For a moment, John wondered if the pirate had knocked himself out again, but the thought was dispelled as he heard Balthier let out a thin moan. There was a thump and a huff as he overestimated the width of the bunk and rolled off it, but John could soon pick out the glint of his eyes in the dim light shining under the door.

"Where are we?" Balthier asked hoarsely. John knocked on the metal bench.

"Take a good, hard guess," the commander said sarcastically. "You ain't in Kansas anymore, that's for sure."

"Kansas?"

"Forget it— it's from an old movie. We're in the _Loki_'s brig, getting transported back to Archades. Fran and the others fled, remember? I don't think they've been caught yet."

"The _Loki_… Freyk's ship… that scummy piece of Couerl guts!" Balthier growled, shaking his head savagely. His earrings clinked, and John took a moment to admire the six sets of earrings on the pirate's lobes. Seven on one ear, it seemed. It was amazing that his ears didn't fall off with the amount of silver twists, steel cuffs, gold, and diamonds piercing them. There even seemed to be a burned metal clover of some sort dangling next to a rakish silver half-twist. There was a tinkle as Balthier shifted on his bench, his bangles and bracelets clanking against the handcuffs. "I'll kill him for destroying the _Strahl_, and ask Fran to make a new violin for me— using his guts for the strings."

"You won't be using anyone's guts for strings if you get executed." John pointed out blandly.

"I told you, you should have run. _I_ can't get executed if you chop my head off or burn me to cinders— though I think it might take a _long_ time to regenerate from the ashes if you scattered them over Ivalice, but _you_ canget killed. You are the Resistance's savior— if you don't mind me saying, you are the Queen Ashe of Earth. Your death means the doom of your people." Balthier sounded serious.

"That's not true." John said. "They aren't helpless. The most important thing about humans is that you can beat them down and they'll get back up. Or had you forgotten? They'll keep going, even if I'm dead." Silence on his companion's end. John realized he must have hit a nerve. "Er… I'm sorry…"

"Don't be. It's been a long time since someone's given me lip like that. Vaan was the last person besides Freyk who actually pointed stuff like that out to me." Balthier lie back down, lacing his hands over his stomach.

* * *

Hours later, soldiers entered the brig to transport them to the actual prison. "The Judiciary Dungeon…" Balthier muttered under his breath. "Gods, I never wanted to go back here." The Judges pushed them through the door, slamming it and locking it behind them. The prison was much like Nalbina- just the lower basement levels of the palace sealed off. It was so dark, it resembled the Barheim Passage more, and also carried the array of ghouls and amphibious creatures native to these surroundings.

"Well now, looky here. It's the 'King Slayer.'" A gormless, wizened face like a ghostly prune leered at them. "Fancy seein' you here. I'm surprised they didn't put ye in solitary like they did Basch back in the day." Balthier leered back.

"Hello, Jules. You're looking just as good as ever," he purred, eyes glittering maliciously. "Freyk clearly holds me low esteem. Obviously, I'm just a 'deranged pirate.'" John blinked.

"You know this guy? He looks ancient."

"Eh? Wot's that?" Jules peered at him through eyes almost lost in the folds of his face. Balthier sighed.

"John, I'm ninety-seven. I've known this guy since I was ten." His lip twitched. "Had you forgotten?" he teased. Jules cackled.

"Ar, weel now, yer as lively as e'er, Ffarmarn!" the old street ear grinned ear to ear, all gums and no teeth.

"Ugh… Jules, I realize you're… old… but…" Balthier made a face. "If you're going to call me by my old name, get it right, please?"

"Hee hee hee! Ol' Jules can tell you wants something a mile away, he can!" the old man cackled even louder, and John glanced around uneasily.

"Make him be quiet, he'll attract the guards and anyone else in the area."

"I need something, Jules. I need a way out. I'll pay you handsomely, eh? What say you?" Balthier asked quickly, making a hundred-gil coin appear between his fingers as if by magic. Jules sucked his gums.

"A hundred gil ain't enough to get yer outta prison, Ffamran. Wot can I buy for a hundred gil in prison?"

Balthier sneered. "What if I increased the price?" nine more coins appeared in his hand. "A thousand gil. That's a lot to pass up, even for you."

"You strike a hard bargain, but I accept." Jules cackled again, palming the coins and making them vanish in the same manner Balthier had made them appear. "There is a water passage, filled with foul creatures and one fouler than all of 'em put toge'er. They guard the entrance to the Southfall Tunnel. No one's survived past there, not that I know of, and no one _can_ survive the Tunnel after that. No one but you, 'cuz yer special 'n all that. N' even you might get mangled beyond belief. Good thing you got a guy to drag yer corpse out!"

John shivered, glancing down at the pirate, who had squatted down to Jules's level.

"Are you sure you want to try that passage?" John asked. "If you haven't noticed, we haven't been doing so hot in all the fights we've been having."

"Nonsense." Balthier snorted. "That's just because we have been fighting crazy, Mist-mutated machines. I'm not afraid of a couple zombies and rats." He stood. "Let's be off. Thanks, Jules."

"Any day, Master Ffamran. Oh, an' one more t'ing. I've got a bit of news you'd be _dyin'_ to hear, but you're gonna have to pay a little more…" the street ear grinned, running a gnarled hand through his wispy white hair.

"What am I dead for to hear?" Balthier said flatly, playing along with the joke and presenting another few coins to the old man, but he shook his head.

"More. I told yer, ye'd be dyin' to hear it. I want the most valuable t'ing you gots on you."

"I suppose I don't want to hear it, then." Balthier began to walk away, but Jules shrugged.

"I guess it's yer funeral." He said. The sky pirate stopped, and with a growl, dumped a small, shining rock in Jules's lap. "Einherjarium. Not bad, ol' blackguard, where'd you scrounge up this?"

"Nabudis, now _tell me_!" Balthier all but screamed in frustration.

"Bahamut." Jules replied simply. "Bahamut rises again."

"Tell me more."

"Can't. That's all I know. That, and shinin' people were seen goin' inside."

"Terminators." John said. "How many of them?"

"Three."

"The last batch." He nodded. "Then, let's get going, Balthier."

Balthier gave Jules a grudging pat on the head before moving to follow John, but stopped dead and began laughing when the man's stomach gave a cavernous growl that sounded not unlike a roaring Behemoth.

"There stands a hungry man." Jules sniggered. John blushed, placing a hand over his stomach. "I suppose ye'd like to stay another hour? Dinner's comin' shortly."

"Dinner?" John raised an eyebrow.

"Aye, dinner." Jules replied, just as several prison wardens entered the room.

Dinner, as it turned out, was a messy affair- some kind of soup with dried strips of meat. Balthier yielded his portion of soup to the commander but kept the meat in case they needed it later.

"You sure?" John asked, his spoon hovering over the soup bowl. "You sure you don't want to eat it?" Balthier shook his head.

"I don't need to eat any more. Not Hume food, at least," he answered.

"Then you should go… do whatever it is you do when you get hungry." John urged.

"I'm fine. You'll know when I'm not."

"You'll find yerself on yer back with 'is teeth buried in yer neck, that's when you'll know." Jules said as he sucked on a bit of meat, unable to chew it.

"No you won't." Balthier argued, stretching his long legs contentedly. "And how would you know?"

John could sense another argument was about to break, and finished his food hurriedly. "Let's go."

* * *

"Past the grate is the tunnel, past the tunnel is the Sochen Cave Palace. Right where we started." John remarked as they stared through the bars of a heavy gate lowered over the exit. Balthier examined the mechanism.

"The gate is too heavy to be lifted or moved, even for me. We'll have to find another way, unless we find the key." He said after a while.

"Couldn't you blast the gate down with magick?" John asked. The sky pirate shook his head, pointing to a glowing crystal the commander had thought was a light.

"That crystal is nethicite. It sucks the Mist out of the air, and without Mist, there's no magick." Seeing John's confused face, he quickly explained. "I know you can't see it or feel it, but you can only _see_ Mist when it is in high enough concentrations, like at the Deadlands and in the Necrohal, but there are always tiny particles no matter where you are. Except here. There is no Mist here."

"So what are we going to do?" John asked. Balthier scanned the room, spotting a vent set just above the grate, high in the darkness.

"There. That is our way out."

"You're going to climb?"

"I've done worse." The pirate shrugged nonchalantly and began to climb, scaling the wall with practiced ease. "Up you come, commander."

John also began the ascent. "You would think that a supposed king slayer would be kept under close guard." He remarked. "We're getting out of this awfully easily."

Balthier stopped glanced down at him, already almost halfway up the gate. John immediately began to climb faster. "No, they are watching. Or they know where I am, at least."

"How? A tracking device?"

"Freyk implanted it when he kicked me," Balthier said, nodding toward his stomach. The flesh was still slightly torn. "I suspect it contains some kind of Holy infused serum that prevents me from using any of my ill-gained power."

"So you're saying you have a tracking device screwed into your guts right now?"

"Yes. And I'm going to ask you to cut it out of me, soon."

"_What?_" John almost let go of the bars, and Balthier grabbed his arm before he fell back toward the ground.

"We should get moving again."

"What am I going to use? How am I going to—"

"You're a military man— for the love of the gods, just follow orders. Have you ever been to prison?" Balthier snapped, dragging himself over the ledge and into the vent. For a man of his size, it was a tight squeeze. For a moment, he wished he still looked sixteen. Then he would have fit through there with ease.

"Yes. Once, to save my mother." John answered defensively.

"Have you ever gone to prison for a crime?" Balthier sounded exasperated by then.

"No."

"Then shut up. I'm trying to get out of here, and I don't want the army on my tail as soon as I get my first breath of freedom. Therefore, you are going to cut that tracking device out of my guts."

* * *

"… Ready?" John asked, watching as Balthier clenched his teeth on a piece of cloth. The sky pirate closed his eyes and nodded.

John plunged the rusted dagger filched from a Zombie Warrior into Balthier's stomach, carving a large, jagged crescent in the flesh. He almost gagged as he slid his fingers into the wound, searching blindly for the little metal transmitter. Balthier gave a little whine, muted by the cloth between his teeth. When John withdrew his hand, prize clutched tight, his fingers were coated in a glove of black blood. He closed his eyes as Balthier's skin began to regenerate, sealing cuts, skin bubbling slightly as it reformed. At this moment, he was greatly admiring his wife, Kate, for having the courage to become a doctor.

"I have an idea," he said, as Balthier spat the cloth out onto the ground.

"What?"

"Let's stick this on a monster. It won't be us they find when they come searching, and it will slow them up if they have to fight their way out."

"I wouldn't have thought of that." Balthier grinned as he stood. "Remember that nasty beastie Jules said was down here? Let's put it there."

* * *

Yays!


	8. Method to the Madness

I am curious to know if anyone has noticed my naming process here. For those who don't know, or thought they saw it, Hugin and Munin were the names of the twin ravens belonging to Odin in Norse mythology, who fly over the world bringing him information. I derived Judge Magister Freyk's name from the name of Odin's wolf, Freki (old English, Frec), meaning desirous, greedy, and gluttonous. It turns out, the names kinda fit.

Thanks to **ElTangoDeRoxanne** for reviewing—I'm sure I'll see **emeraldonyxdragon** soon!

* * *

"Remind me why we are doing this?" Balthier asked wryly, tightening his grip on a makeshift staff.

"It was your idea." John's voice was as tight as the pirate's white knuckled grip on his staff.

Balthier looked up at him from where they crouched behind a rock, watching the one "fouler than all of them put together" patrol around a hanging cage. They could make out a human inside, white faced and ogling with terror.

"John, if I'd known he was talking about Zalera the Death Seraph, I would not have thought to put the tracker here," he complained, and glanced behind them. "There's no way out— the way we came through is sealed by a magick barrier of some sort."

"I thought you said there was no Mist!" John exploded.

"I am not completely infallible," Balthier returned evenly, glaring at the tracking device in John's hand leaking clear, faintly glowing liquid.

"Then let's just stick it to the damn thing and get out of here!" At that moment, the rock they sheltered behind exploded, and Zalera smiled at them with his eternal grin.

"Peek-a-boo." The Esper said without moving its' jaw. Balthier grabbed John and pulled him out of the way before he could be flattened by Zalera's hand, which came whistling out of the darkness to crush them.

"Evening, Zalera." The sky pirate said with a charming smile. "Haven't seen you since Basch died."

The Esper cackled, a noise like wind blowing through a cave, and summoned Dead Bones to his side. John quickly sank his dagger, still black with Balthier's blood, between the eyes of the closest skeleton to him. It screeched, bony fingers raking at him, but a solid punch shattered its skull. The skeleton collapsed into a heap, and did not get up. Balthier used his staff to separate a zombie's torso from its legs, crushing its' head under his foot. The next thing John knew, the sky pirate's hands were filled with Cactaur needles, which he flung with great accuracy at Zalera. Most of the needles rattled off the Esper's cloak and wing, but several of them embedded themselves in the Shamaness grafted to his body. She screamed, a horrifying, blood curdling wail, and at the same time, Balthier fell to his knees, covering his ears and crying out in anguish.

When the noise faded, he stumbled to his feet unsteadily. "Balthier!" John yelled, running toward him, but he stopped when the sky pirate raised his head.

His eyes were white. They were not their normally dancing golden honey brown, or even their unearthly, inhuman, but equally as familiar shining silver. They were white as bone or a funeral veil. John took a step back. "Are you okay?" He was unprepared when Balthier bared his teeth and lunged at him with astonishing speed. His soldier's instinct kicked in, and he ducked, falling on his back and bringing both his feet up, pushing the pirate over his head and somewhere behind him. "What's wrong with you, man?" he shouted, but Balthier got up again, his only reply a nasty growl and a likewise nasty smile, fangs glittering in the light.

"He's been possessed by the Death Seraph." A new voice called out to him, his accent almost identical to Balthier's. John glanced toward the cage in the center of the room, keeping Balthier in his peripheral vision.

"How?"

"I don't know, that's just my guess." The man shook his head, a few strands of grimy, raven black hair falling across his face. He brushed them aside with a dirty hand.

"Who are you?" John backed toward the cage, dodging another lunge from Balthier. One of the possessed pirate's fingers, curled into a blunt claw, nicked his face, drawing blood. The pirate licked it off his fingers, his white eyes glowing with hungry light.

"I'm… Leon." The man paused for a minute. "If you free me, I can help you fight."

"I'll see what I can do." John answered, not about to pass up any help in a fight against a Death God and a possessed, vampire pirate. He continued to back up, and Balthier continued his advance, Zalera trailing in his wake. When he was backed against the cage, Balthier sprang. At the last possible moment, John dove out of the way, and the pirate crashed into the hanging cage, snapping the bars and skewering himself on the broken ends. Leon scrambled through the gap while Balthier hung limply from the remains of the cage in a death trance before stirring, his eyelids fluttering.

"You can't take on your possessed friend the way he is— the only way to free him and get out of here is to kill Zalera. I'll distract your friend. You go after the Esper!" Leon commanded. John nodded, charging the Death Seraph. He picked up the staff Balthier had been using as he ran, using it first as a pole to vault into the air, then jamming it between Zalera's ribs. He hung there for dear life while the Esper buffeted him with his wing. The Shamaness was screaming all the while.

Leon circled Balthier, who turned his attention from John to his new opponent. "Right then, come on!" Leon grinned, and Balthier snarled. When the pirate approached, Leon cast Holy. Balthier gave another inhuman scream as he was swallowed in Holy light, his skin blistering and burning, but he stretched fingers of bone toward Leon, magick forcing him to move though he should have been unconscious. When the light dissipated, the young man spotted the glitter in Balthier's chest through a rip in his clothing.

"Right. That's coming out _now_." He plunged his hand through the pirate's chest, bones made brittle by Holy snapping like burned wood, closing his fingers about the medallion. Then he pulled. Balthier shuddered and jerked, clutching Leon's hand in an attempt to stop the medallion's removal, but he had been greatly weakened by the remnants of the serum and the spell still running in his veins. With a final tug, Leon ripped the medallion free, and Balthier collapsed to the ground, still.

John heaved himself up on the staff, muscles groaning in protest, and straddled it, eye to eye with the enraged Esper. At one point, the Shamaness even reached out and wrapped her arm about his neck. He stabbed her, and she cried out again, black blood pouring from the wound, and she relinquished her grip to nurse her hurts. John stabbed the Shamaness again— this time Zalera howled in pain, writhing, and the soldier was almost flung from his precarious perch. He clung there like a rodeo rider, narrowly avoiding getting gored on the end of Zalera's horns. Raising his arm again, he plunged the dagger into the Shamaness's chest.

She moaned quietly, her head rolling back, and Zalera sighed. His form began to waver, rapidly becoming insubstantial, until finally, he vanished into the Mist. John fell back to the floor, and at the same time, there was a searing pain in his right arm. He rolled down his sleeve, breathing through clenched teeth, and beheld the brand printed on his arm.

"Nice job!" Leon applauded. "Not many people have taken down Espers before. There's only thirteen of them, you know."

"Thanks. How's Balthier?" John asked. Leon averted his eyes.

"Not too well…" He stepped to the side and showed John the corpse.

A frail, old man lie in a pool of black blood, an ugly, bloody hole in his chest. His hands were like bony claws, gnarled and twisted, and his hair was white and silver, just the faintest hint of bronze shining in the dim light. "What did you do?" John gasped, falling to his knees in the sea of blood and pulling the ancient corpse to him. Its eyes were slightly open, but there was no light in those cloudy, rheumy eyes. It almost did not look like Balthier, with sunken, sagging cheeks and grey-white skin, but John recognized the point of his nose, the jut of his chin.

"I dealt with him as I deal with any other zombie. The only way to kill them is to pull their hearts out." Leon said. "I'm sorry, but Zalera turned him. It was the only way. I didn't think this would happen, though."

"I suspected that Balthier has been dead a long time, or kept from aging somehow… Zalera took possession of his soul, that or pushed it out of his body. Probably turned him back to how he should be when you took out that magical coin. Damn." John speculated, closing the old man's eyes.

The body began to smoke, the skin blackening and burning, glowing with magickal embers. Even the bones began to burn after a moment, but the flames did not hurt John, who remained there until the last of the ashes flowed away on the wind. Only a pile of clothes and jewelry lie in his lap.

"Damn!" he howled. Leon held the coin out, and John snatched it.

"I suppose you could hold onto it, as a memento…"

"Oh… that was rude, tearing my heart out like that…" Balthier's voice moaned through the room. John gave a cry of horror as black and red flesh began to encrust the medallion, dropping it in disgust. The flesh continued to grow, encircling the medallion and pulling it inside until only a tiny sliver was visible. After a while, bones began to emerge from the pulsating mass, first an arm, then a skull with fanged teeth. With great effort, the jumbled mess of bone and muscle pulled itself to its feet. Then the muscle began to boil, becoming skin, creating hair, and with a horrible squelch, eventually eyes formed, too. Warm, brown eyes. Within moments, Balthier the sky pirate stood before them, in all his youthful glory. There was not even a line on his face to show that he had been a wrinkled, ancient corpse only moments before. He swiftly dodged behind a rock, his face burning red.

"Er… John? Could you bring my clothes over here? And don't forget my piercings." John chuckled at the pirate's state of nakedness before complying and bringing over the said articles. After a few moments, Balthier stepped back out from behind the rock, fully clothed and fully regenerated. "I daresay that was the most unpleasant feeling in my life," he said. "I'll be guarding my heart more closely from now on."

"Are you sure you're okay?" John asked cautiously, searching for any hint of white in his eyes. Balthier nodded.

"I can hardly remember what happened, though. I just remember that fellow pulling my heart out. What happened, anyway? Who's that?" his eyes darted toward Leon.

"You were possessed by Zalera— probably because you're an undead. I pulled your heart out because I thought you were turned. There's no saving the turned. I'm Leon, by the way." Leon held his hand out, and Balthier shook it, eyeing him suspiciously. John shook his head.

"I've only partially forgiven him for killing you." He said, and Balthier cocked his head.

"Well, I'll give you another reason to not fully forgive him. This is no Leon. This is Munin Leonidas Solidor, twin brother to the Emperor and joint Emperor of Archades. What brings you down here, hmm?" the pirate grinned viciously.

"I apologize." Munin bowed his head, pawing his hair out of his eyes again. "My father told me you were very clever. It is a pleasure to meet you, Balthier Bunansa. I was thrown in here by Hugin, for reasons unknown, but for the fact that my brother has gone mad!"

Balthier narrowed his eyes. "Mad, you say?"

"Yes—"

"Quiet!" John hissed at that moment. They fell silent, straining their ears. Eventually, they heard the clanking footsteps of soldiers battling their way down the hall. "Let's get out of here." He dropped the tracking device on the ground. "Quickly, into the tunnel!"

They snuck out of the room toward the tiny mouth of a sewage pipe, and after much effort, forced their way into sewer beyond. Munin made a face as they plunged into six feet of murky brown water. Needless to say, the smell was atrocious.

"My shirt is ruined." Balthier groaned.

"Your shirt was already ruined since we left Nabudis." John reprimanded him. "Jules said to follow the current and we would end up in the Sochen Cave Palace."

They swam for a while, occasionally taking rests by clinging to the walls of the tunnel. "Why were you in prison?" Munin asked eventually.

"Balthier was accused of killing the Emperor, Larsa, and arrested. Apparently by decree of your brother." John replied. Munin creased his eyebrows.

"Hugin really has gone mad…" he whispered. "I do not believe you killed our father, Balthier."

"Good to know." Balthier sounded distracted, his eyes unfocused. John snapped his fingers in front of the undead pirate's face.

"What's on your mind?" he asked.

"Bahamut. Why is it rising again?" Balthier asked no one in particular.

"What's Bahamut?"

"Bahamut was an air fortress built by my mad uncle, Vayne, and used to assault Rabanastre seventy-five years ago during the Nethicite War. It was there Balthier and Fran gained their fame in the history books of Ivalice as heroes, who "sacrificed" their lives to steer the fortress away from the city and crash it outside of Rabanastre, instead of on it like Vayne planned." Munin explained.

"The control systems should have been dashed to pieces during the crash." Balthier said, shaking his head.

"Maybe the Terminators fixed it?" John tried to be helpful.

"Maybe." Balthier replied quietly.

"Terminators?" Munin asked.

"Balthier was summoned to my world on accident when Skynet, who builds the machines, experimented with a time device meant to send the things we call Terminators to a time in my childhood, to kill me before I could lead the humans to resist their tyrannical rule of Earth. The result was that they thought they had found Earth, and sent a large regiment of Terminators here. We cut down all of them but ten at the source, and three of them, mutated by the Mist, went into Archades and killed your father. We killed two others in Nabudis. Two were destroyed by Ivalice's harsh environment." John said.

"It sounds like the last of them went onto Bahamut." Balthier added, swimming a few more strokes through the filthy water, carefully keeping his mouth and nose out of the noxious mix of human refuse.

"Then, I have some interesting news for you." Munin said. "Hugin went to Rabanastre with Judge Magister Freyk for a conference with Lady Ishtar B'Nargin Dalmasca. When he came back, he had changed. He threw me into prison, and Judge Freyk became his most trusted aide."

"Curious…" Balthier whispered. "Most curious indeed…"

* * *

"Do you hear that?" Munin asked.

"Hear what?" Balthier and John asked at the same time.

"That roaring noise…" the ex-emperor clarified. Balthier squinted into the darkness.

"It sounds… it sounds like a waterfall!" he cried, and the next moment, they were swept out of the drainpipe and into a massive waterfall pouring into the Sochen Cave Palace. There was a wet crunch as they smacked into a narrow stone walkway under the pounding water, and Munin was the first to drag himself free of the deluge. His cloth and leather finery was ruined beyond repair. Balthier's white shirt was now a disgusting shade of brown, and he removed it as soon as he was clear of the sewage water pouring out of the pipe. John emerged last, shaking his head like a wet dog.

"Let's get out into Tchita. We can take a Gate Crystal into Rabanastre and try to get into contact with Fran and the others there." John said.

"I don't want to get close to Rabanastre after what happened to Hugin; not yet, anyways." Munin said. "Besides, Balthier is wanted by the Empire for high treason. Dalmasca would turn him in to maintain good relations with Archadia."

"Where else, then?" John argued.

"Balfonheim." Balthier said. "The most lawless city in Ivalice. Murderers, thieves, pirates, assassins, you'll find them all hiding down in Balfonheim."

"Of course, it also helps that you're the Pirate King, and you can declare war on the empire if you so choose." Munin's black eyes twinkled. Balthier nodded agreeably.

"Aye, that I could, but with a weirded Hugin and a savage Freyk in command of the army, we wouldn't last. No, we'll just go back to the Manse and recuperate. Fran probably returned to Balfonheim as well, waiting for us."

* * *

Balthier was right, as it turned out, and Fran had been waiting for them at Balfonheim for three days. By the third morning, she had almost been ready to give up.

"_Balthier!_" she grabbed him first around the neck, throttling him until his face turned white. "I thought you had been executed along with John," she whispered, eventually pulling him into a hug. She quickly pulled back. "You are a mess. What have you been doing? Swimming through Chocobo droppings?"

"Something very close to that, yes." Balthier replied. "This is Munin Leonidas Solidor. He's joining us on our Terminator hunt. Apparently, Hugin has gone mad."

"You can tell us the tale later. _After_ you shower. We'll burn your clothes in a minute." Fran broke in. John stifled a smile.

After they had bathed, they sat around a fire place, where their clothes were slowly being devoured by the flames.

"So you mean that the Terminators have repaired a machine capable of taking down cities with one blast?" Barnes asked flatly. "You're f—" the fire crackled rather loudly at this point "—ing me."

"Not at all." Munin said, ignoring the outburst.

"Barnes, watch your language, you're in the presence of a King." Blair punched him in the shoulder.

"Two Kings, actually, but never mind." Munin shook his head kindly. Balthier leaned against Fran contentedly, and she ran her finger down the back of his vest. The one he wore today was gold and deep red. Her fingers migrated to the base of his neck, eliciting a deep purr that rose unbidden from his throat, and closing his eyes, he nuzzled her neck, drinking in her burning warmth with his cold skin. Blair laughed from where she sat in Marcus's lap, his arms around her protectively. Barnes looked on somewhat enviously, but said nothing.

"I wish Star were here." Kyle said forlornly. "Man, I miss Star."

"I miss Kate. And Alice." John added.

"Alice?" Marcus cocked his head.

"Kate had a baby."

"Oh."

"So… any idea how to take down Bahamut again?" Kyle asked shyly. Munin glanced at Balthier, who appeared to be fast asleep with his head in Fran's lap, but for the purr that still rumbled ever so faintly in his throat. The man clearly did not intend to do any answering, so Munin took it upon himself to come up with the ideas.

"When Balthier first did it, he had the Bhujerban Air Fleet at his back and Archadia as both their enemies. However, I doubt that Bhujerba would intend to help him again, especially since they are not at war with the Empire. And, if I remember correctly, weren't you two attacking Bhujerban Magicite Transports and smuggling Magicite out of Bhujerba recently?" he asked slyly.

"We made a pretty amount of gil off of that operation, did we not?" Fran nudged her partner's shoulder.

"Mm… seven hundred gil a kilogram for plain magicite," he answered sleepily. Munin gave a polite little cough.

"Ignoring your illicit activities in Bhujerba, you have been accused with regicide in Archadia. Hugin has removed me from the throne, and Freyk commands the army. I hear they mean to retake Dalmsaca. In Rozarria, the house Margrace went extinct in the Sangriento Civil war. And you called Dalmasca's wrath down upon your head during the Aegis Crystal heist."

"A pity." Balthier sat up, stretching.

"You have no allies, Balthier. How do you intend to get close enough to Bahamut without getting blasted by the Nethicite Cannon?" Munin asked. Balthier exchanged a smile with Fran.

"Tell them, darling."

"You didn't think we ruled Balfonheim without having our own army of sorts, did you?" she asked.

* * *

Yays!


	9. Just Before the Plunge

Yay! Updated! I am sooooooooo happy because I got 100% on the reading and writing state test! Heh heh… thank you, fanfiction writing, and thank you, awesome authors.

Thanks to **ElTangodeRoxanne**! She's always so awesome! You should read her stories! Sniff… where's **emeraldonyxdragon**?

* * *

"You have your own army?" Munin gaped. "That is a clear breach of Archadian law!"

"Oh, hush. Balfonheim is a part of the Archadian Empire, but what kind of people do you take us for? Law abiding citizens?" Balthier scoffed. "You just named off three of my crimes earlier!"

"And he does not count all our exploits before the Nethicite War. The entire reason we have people willing to die for us is because of our reputation." Fran explained, her fingers busy combing through her long hair.

"Of course, you have plenty willing to kill you, too." Munin pointed out. "It is the common mind of the people in Archades that there is something wrong with you. You can't have ruled Balfonheim for fifty years without being a little… you know… different. And you know that the people of Archades hate anything not Hume. They still don't let Bangaa or Seeq enlist in the army, despite my father's pleas."

"Yes, I _am _getting a little worried. The last assassin went after Fran…" Balthier sighed. "That was mildly frightening."

"Well, now that we know you have an army, how are you going to bring that power against the Terminators on Bahamut?" John asked. "From the look of these schematics you've got, Bahamut is kind of like a Skynet plant, heavy anti-air defense and the whole nine yards."

"Bahamut's best weapon is a Mist fuelled Nethicite Cannon. The shot is fast and _very_ destructive." Fran said, getting up to stand by the military grade strategy table. She pulled up a small, three-dimensional image of Bahamut, and ran a simulation of what happened during the Nethicite War. Blair whistled at the sight of the Bhujerban ships exploding in a twinkle of Mist and fire.

"That's some fire power they got there."

"Yes, however, sky pirate ships are smaller and more agile than Bhujerban Destroyers and light cruisers. They are vehicles for escape and speed, not for engaging the enemy head on." Balthier said, then paused. "I am pretty sure that most of them are at least armed with enough weapons for an extended dogfight. The _Strahl_ is— was." His face darkened.

"I am sorry about what Freyk has done to your ship." Munin said. "He will be duly admonished for his actions against an innocent, and a hero nonetheless."

"Heroes be damned." Balthier replied. "He took my _home_ from me."

John watched a model of the _Strahl_ fly over the battlefield, docking on the huge image of Bahamut like a moth descending on a flower.

"Balthier?" he asked.

"What?" the sky pirate snapped irritably.

"How did you get on Bahamut last time?"

"I flew, how else?"

"Well, you don't have a ship now, so… how are you going to get on?"

Balthier snarled several things uncouth in several different tongues. Fran grinned as guttural Landisian, musical Vieran, lisping Rozarrian, and thunderous Bhujerban rattled by in quick succession, a few choice words in ear curling Balfonheim street cant thrown in the mix. He stalked from one end of the table to another like a Couerl on the Cerobi Steppes, muttering under his breath.

"A ship, a ship! My kingdom for a ship!" he at last yelled, throwing his hands up in the air. "It's high time to step down from this little Pirate King lark, set up my successor, Solanum, in my place, and become a minor Pirate Lord instead."

"Balthier, Solanum is far from ready. He can barely write his own name and read the simplest text, never mind write decrees or read complaints." Fran reminded him.

Balthier growled, glaring at a map of Ivalice on the wall with enough heat that it seemed as if it would imminently combust. "The army will be a distraction, then. We'll use it to draw Bahamut's fire away from Rabanastre and approach from the ground. Then we can work our way up from the inside."

Barnes nodded, examining the schematic. "I'm gonna guess that the control center is way up at the top?"

"Yes," Fran replied. "It will be hard to get to the top if all the Rooks have been reactivated, but we can make it."

At that moment, Marcus yawned a huge, jaw-cracking yawn, and that was when they noticed Kyle snoring with his head back on the couch, and even Blair seemed to be nodding off. John sighed.

"Not that this talk of doom and gloom isn't interesting and all, but I think it's time for us to get some rest. We've been through a lot…" he said. Balthier rose to his feet.

"Very well. Let's find you some rooms. There has to be some place in this mansion not being used."

* * *

Blair rolled over in the bed. She'd never seen such luxury, and never even hoped to see it after Judgment Day. The bed was _huge_, a four-poster with red and gold velvet curtains and an ocean of white silk sheets. There was a bathroom attached to the main bedroom, and when she'd seen the tub (it resembled a swimming pool, it was so large) she'd stayed in the bath, soaking in the hot, fragrant water until her fingers were like prunes. After that, she'd collapsed into bed, her stomach full and her skin warm, and slept like a log until noon. She felt Marcus stir next to her. The bed was so large it felt as if he were miles away, not just on the other side of the bed.

A quiet knock on the door. Blair sighed, sinking deeper into the mattress. She hoped whoever was at the door would just go away. The knock came again.

"Persistent little snot, aren't ya?" she muttered, throwing her legs over the side of the bed and standing up. "Who is it?" she asked, her hand on the doorknob.

"It's Kyle." The voice answered. She opened the door immediately. Kyle stood there, a pillow clutched in his hands, and she was briefly reminded that he had just cleared being a teen, not truly a man yet.

"What's the matter?"

"Well… we were just talkin' about killin' those Terminators and saving the world from Sky Fortresses and whatnot, and as I was thinking… what about us? Where will we go? Will we ever go home?" Kyle's eyes were bright. "I wanna go home. I miss Star, and I miss Kate, and I just… I just… I just miss Earth, even if it is nothing but a nuclear wasteland."

Blair's own heart almost jumped into her mouth, and she felt as if she'd just been punched in the gut. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten about Earth, even just for a few days. Kate was probably going crazy, thinking John had died. "We'll figure something out. I mean, Balthier said he'd been to Earth before, but apparently he got back. He's done it multiple times, I hear. We'll ask him. He'll know."

The sky pirate in question was in the hangar, where he was working on another airship, wearing some loose pants and a horrendously stained shirt. Munin was with him, hovering about with curiosity dancing in his eyes.

"Really, Balthier. I am interested rather interested in how the old _Strahl _worked. That has become Lost Technology you know."

"Only about seventy years and it's 'Lost Technology.' I'm hurt." Balthier sneered. Blair, upon seeing the ship, completely forgot about her questions. The airship looked like a dragonfly, and they could see a mount for two glossair rings underneath the "head" and "tail" and a mist engine inside. It was another folding wing design— one Balthier apparently favored, and he was currently working on the mechanism to pull the wings, shimmering gold, white, and faint blue apparatuses, in and out. An old Moogle with a faded red pom-pom was sleeping on a crate nearby, wrench nearly falling from its paws. When it snored, almost inhaling its furry beard, Balthier glanced over at it.

"Nono," he came over to the Moogle, wiping grease from his fingers with a towel. "Perhaps you should retire to your chambers. You've done enough for me today." Nono woke up with a snort.

"I'm fine, Master Balthier! Just resting my eyes." He squeaked.

"No, you weren't. You were sleeping." Balthier said flatly.

"You're almost done with the _Strahl_! You just need to put in the guns, glossair rings, and cover her, then paint her, and you're done! The least you could do is let me help you!" Nono cried, before dissolving into a coughing fit. Dust seemed to be rising out of his fur, and Balthier grabbed him before he toppled off the crate, pressing a hand glowing with White Magick to the Moogle's chest. Nono wheezed a few times, before with one final cough, he cleared whatever blockage was in his throat. Stroking a hand still trailing magick up and down Nono's back, Balthier picked him up, cradling him gently in the crook of his arm.

"Well? Shall we finish the ship? Solanum managed to get the wreck of the old _Strahl _back from the Imperials, though he paid a very pretty sum of gil to get it back from under the lesser judge's nose. We can reuse some of the guns and other pieces in the new _Strahl_," he said.

Nono chuckled. "Solanum's a pirate after your own heart, if you don't mind me saying so, Master Balthier. Now, shall we get working on my final masterpiece? If you've got to go, I'll finish it with the rest of my crew." The Moogle squinted at some schematics on a stool.

"I like your new ship." John commented as he entered the room. "Too bad we can't fly it to Bahamut."

"Yes, it is a pity." Balthier sighed. Munin ran his hand over a metal beam.

"When I get my throne back, I can send you some scraps from Draklor if you'd like," He said.

"That would be much appreciated." The sky pirate responded with a graceful bow. "Now, Fran has gone to Sea-breeze Lane to arrange for Chocobos to take us to Rabanastre. We could do Gate Crystal, but it seems like the Mist coming out of Bahamut is interfering with the Gate Crystals. I don't want to end up getting warped somewhere else again. The journey will be about a week or two, but we can do it. When we are within a day's march of Bahamut, we will call the rest of the army." Balthier said. "I am afraid to know how much it will cost…"

"What do you mean?"

The sky pirate pulled a face. "Gurdy likes to price her Chocobos at obscene amounts."

* * *

Fran handed Balthier a tab as she held the reigns of four Chocobos, and Gurdy, another four. He blanched when he read the numbers, his face going from tan to white. "_Six thousand gil for seven birds?_" he almost shouted, but would not let anyone catch him doing anything so uncouth as that in public.

"I think it is fair. After all, I don't know when I'll be getting them back." Gurdy said. Balthier sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose, before signing the paper with a flourish. Marcus snorted with amusement—for a man who fancied himself pure class, the pirate had monstrously bad handwriting.

"Fine. Show that to my successor if you want the money. He'll handle it." Balthier easily swung up on the Chocobo. It squarked, turning around to regard him with one button black eye. "Oh gods, are you related to that one in the Paramina rift that hated me when I looked young?" he muttered, and the bird kweh'd as if it understood him and was saying, 'Yes, yes I am.' "_Brilliant_."

"So, uh, how do you ride these?" Kyle asked. "Ow!" the Chocobo knocked him on the head with the underside of its beak affectionately.

"Like a… I believe you call it a horse?" Fran asked, glancing toward her partner, who nodded. John, with a little scramble, managed to mount his Chocobo, though it almost began running as soon as he was on. Balthier quickly caught up to him, easily reaching over and grabbing the reins.

"Easy does it, John. Just don't pull out any feathers, and you'll be fine." The commander nodded. Marcus had somewhat of a harder time, but he'd been given the strongest Chocobo available, and after much struggle, they were finally underway.

* * *

Kyle sighed as they rode across the Tchita Uplands, wincing as he shifted in the Chocobo saddle. The experience had seemed new and exciting at first, but it had quickly turned into a pain.

"How much farther?" he complained, careful not to inhale too deeply and get a whiff of the horrible scent of Chocobo feathers. Munin spurred his mount a little closer.

"In order to make good time, we would have to make the Hunter's Camp on the Phon Coast by nightfall. We'll switch birds there in the morning, I think," the fallen Emperor said. Kyle stretched his knees in the saddle, listening to them creak and pop.

"You mean we have another day of this to go?"

"Another seven days, actually."

"F—" Kyle's stretching foot jabbed into the Chocobo's side, and it screeched, leaping forward and galloping by Fran and Balthier at the front of the line. Balthier instantly urged his bird forward, snatching for the reins and almost taking a tumble into the mud as he briefly overbalanced, but was caught by Fran, who grabbed him from the other side. Munin merely shook his head, chuckling.

* * *

By the time that they reached the River Nebra, they were all bow-legged and sore, and most of them were very grouchy to boot. When the first sky pirate ship, a rather ragtag thing that looked almost ready to fall apart, appeared on the horizon, Balthier looked more ready to chew the head off the pilot than to give orders. Fran, with her unending well of patience, ended up directing the army instead. She lifted her head to view the swarm of different ships hovering over their heads.

"Do not let up your attack until _Bahamut_ goes up in flames. We make for the fortress in three minutes. Go ahead and cover us. Your bravery will be well rewarded!" she said calmly into a commlink. An assortment of cheers sounded back from the speaker.

The pirate ships departed, cavorting toward the spire of the Sky Fortress in the distance. Balthier could make out the light of revolving glossair rings as Bahamut glided across the desert sands. "I don't want to know how much I'll have to do before I get enough gil to pay all those pirates for fighting here." He muttered. "Perhaps I'll go take a job from one of those Rozarrian spice smugglers. They pay pretty well."

Fran remounted her Chocobo, as did Barnes, Marcus, Blair, and John. Kyle followed suit, somewhat reluctantly.

"If you remember, the last job you botched in Rozarria ended up with you almost getting drawn and quartered." Fran reminded him. Balthier wrinkled his nose.

"That was fifty years ago. They'll be old and senile now," he answered. Fran sniffed, though her eyes danced with amusement.

"Balthier, what if I died in this assault on Bahamut? What if _we _died?" she asked.

"Well then, I suppose we won't have to foot the bill for the war," he answered, smirking. "Now that's a good thought."

They were interrupted by a loud explosion. A huge cloud of sand was flung up out of the desert, and Mist roiled high above, twinkling.

"So they've began using that cannon, haven't they?" Marcus muttered, watching the agile pirate ships dart around the larger fortress. As he watched, a few came hurtling out of the sky, like flaming comets, slamming into the ground. He wondered how many of them survived to claim the reward for fighting in the battle against the Sky Fortress. Balthier spurred his Chocobo forth.

"Well, enough of our fellows are dying… let's get on with the show, shall we?"

* * *

Next up: BAHAMUT!


	10. Unexpected Meetings

Huzzah! Er, 'scuse me. Thanks to **ElTangoDeRoxanne **for her awesome reviews and conversations, and to **Krjs**, who is supportive and kind to me. The ending is coming up!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

* * *

The Chocobos galloped over the sand that was swiftly turning to mud. _Bahamut_ had long been pried from the lake that had formed around its base when it lifted off, and now it left huge tracks in the ground where thick vines dragged underneath.

The sound of gunfire rattling just over their heads, and some just around them, the bullets zipping by, was a constant reminder of the danger they were in. Blair ducked as a bullet zinged just over her head, clipping a few feather tips from her mount. The bird squawked in alarm, but she whispered to it and stroked her fingers through its smelly feathers, and it calmed again.

"We should have gotten Dalmascan Cavalry Chocobos if you were going to bring them _right up to Bahamut!_" Munin yelled over the roar of cannons and the rat-tat-tat of guns. "Braver, you know?"

Balthier glanced up toward the sky, then jerked the reins of his bird, shouting, "_Left! Hurry!_" Seconds later, the wreckage of an airship smashed into the mixed sand and mud, showering them with debris. Flames erupted from every orifice, and there was an explosion as the glossair rings ignited and the engine burned. Marcus blinked dirt out of his eyes, spluttering.

"Is everyone okay?" he called. Kyle rode up next to him, looking pale and shaky from his near-death experience, but no worse for wear.

Fran squinted at the wrecked ship, her ears erect, and Balthier shared a look with her, something close to sorrow flickering in his eyes. "Everyone is okay except the ship's captain and crew," she announced. "We have not been harmed."

"Bravery, huh?" Balthier ran his hand over the feathers on the back of his Chocobo's neck. "Whoever makes it through this war will be brave beyond anything we have e'er seen, be they man or bird." He lightly kicked the sides of his mount. "However, as we mourn their sacrifice, we lose time— look, _Bahamut_ has moved far ahead of us."

"So you're just going to leave them?" John asked. "Aren't you going to get them? To bury them? Give them a decent grave? Aren't you going to give your dead respect?"

"There is nothing you can do for the dead now. The only thing you can do is keep more from joining their ranks in the emptiness that follows." Balthier said dully, trotting away. John scowled, but Barnes looked thoughtful as he followed them.

_Bahamut_ was positively roaring over the ground. The birds raced after it, and they carefully steered them around the massive trailing vines that had tethered the sky fortress in the lake that had formed around its base. Birds, disturbed from their nests in the foliage that had grown on top of its dome, flapped around _Bahamut_'s top, screeching.

"_Fran!_" Balthier shouted, barely audible over the howl of engines and hiss of steam. She looked toward him, and he gestured awkwardly over his head with one hand toward the lowest ring of the fortress. She nodded in understanding, gripping her bow and nocking an arrow. Tied to the arrow was a great length of rope. Aiming somewhat haphazardly because of the bumpy ride, Fran pulled back the string, aiming high, pulling until her arms screamed and the bow threatened to snap, before firing. The arrow whistled away, up into the sky fortress, and promptly came tumbling down. She flicked an ear in annoyance. Their first boarding attempt had failed.

"The arrow is too weak and has no means to grip anything. Do you have anything more heavy duty to use?" she called. Balthier grinned wickedly, fumbling for something she could not see on the other side of his Chocobo. He held it up: a barbed, heavy grappling hook with a long cable attached.

"Better?" he asked. Fran nodded.

"Very much." Balthier whirled the grappling hook over his head like a lasso, only much more deadly if anyone happened to come within the radius of the rope. With a grunt, he heaved the hook up toward a small projection from _Bahamut_'s side, where it wrapped around and held firm.

"Up we get," he mumbled as he slowly began to stand. Inch by inch, he moved his feet, maneuvering until he was balanced on the back of his running steed. His arms pin-wheeled for a moment as he sought his balance (which was hard on the back of a sprinting Chocobo), before he jumped for the rope. He dangled from it momentarily, looking as if he were going to fall and be reduced to a bloody smear on the Estersand, but gradually, he started to shinny up. "Marcus!"

He tossed the rope to the cyborg, who caught it with ease. "I'm not gonna try your fancy Chocobo leapin' trick!" Marcus bellowed back, choosing instead to vault out of the saddle. Balthier hauled the rope up, hand over hand, muscles straining. Even for him, enhanced being that he was, pulling a three-hundred-odd pound cyborg up over fifty feet vertically was nothing short of immensely difficult. However, having Marcus there would come in handy, especially when the next batch would be Blair, Kyle, and John, all together. Marcus helped to pull them up, though there was a brief moment of terror when a sudden gust of wind picked them up and threatened to splatter them against the side of the fortress. They pulled faster after that.

As soon as Fran, Munin, and Barnes appeared over the side of the ledge, Balthier and Marcus immediately grabbed their arms before they were plucked off the side of the ship by another blast of screaming wind.

"Right, where's our entrance?" Blair panted.

"There is a door about a hundred feet down this walkway." Fran said, leading the way. Sure enough, they reached the door, but when Barnes blasted it away with his rocket launcher, a spider web of red lights met their eyes.

"Laser tripwires." Balthier explained. "The instant someone breaks those beams, an alarm will sound, and that's the last thing we need."

"We know— they have 'em on Earth, too." Kyle said. "Though how to disarm 'em is another question."

"Allow me." John said, stepping forward and pulling out a tiny computer. He slid a thin chip into the identification card slot. Numbers began scrolling over the screen, eventually resolving themselves into a five-digit passcode. He punched the enter button, and red lights faded. "Cake," he grinned, and Blair snorted as she stepped by him and into the dark interior of the ship. Balthier brought up the rear, glancing around warily.

"Welcome to the Sky Fortress _Bahamut_, built by my father Cidolphus Demen Bunansa in 706, Old Valendian, supposedly destroyed by Fran and I in that same year," he said in something barely more than a whisper.

* * *

The inside of the fortress was dark, the only source of light that streaming from the open door. It seemed that the Terminators had only seen fit to restore power to the most important parts of the ship—namely, the guns and cannons. However, there was a low hum nearby, and the quiet sound of clanking footsteps on the circular walkway around the perimeter of the room. Catwalks connected the outer walkway with an inner column housing a small lift.

"Terminators?" John whispered, glancing to Marcus. Marcus shook his head.

"People and strange machines—not Terminators." He replied. Balthier tapped his ill begotten power, the inky darkness clearing. The thump of his companion's heartbeats grew loud in his ears, like discordant military drums, and their breath became the low rush of wind. He hated the spark of excitement stirring in the bottom of his stomach, the thoughts of a predator running through his head, and extinguished it with an extra dose of his usual languid temper, concentrating on the problem at hand.

Imperial soldiers staggered about aimlessly, arms hanging and backs bowed. A few rooks hovered nearby. The smell of death was overpowering, rising from every chink in the soldiers' armor like noxious fumes. Balthier was glad that he was graced with only the faintest, passing semblance of that decaying scent— what he smelled now, from these creatures likely as old as he, made his nose want to jump off his face and hide.

"There is no way through this room without engaging at least one zombie soldier in the process," he noted. "The best way would be the third walkway to our left."

Seeing Kyle readying a gun, Munin stayed him with a raised hand. "Sometimes prudence is the better part of valor. We will fight only who we must, and save our strength for the rest of the machines," he said.

They began to tip-toe forward, Marcus leading, Balthier trailing. He swept the room with another silver eyed gaze. The zombies knew they were there; he could see them lifting their armored heads, sniffing the stale air and homing in on them like hungry wolves.

"We might want to pick up the pace," Balthier noted in his most reasonable tone, drawing the musket with which he had replaced his confiscated Fomalhaut. A zombie groaned at that moment, and the others all joined in the howl. Marcus quickened his step, slugging a zombie that suddenly crawled out from under the walkway so hard that he dented its facemask, and broke into a run.

They dashed for the lift, the zombies surging after them like dogs on a hunt. Balthier ripped open a pack of powder with his teeth, pouring it down the long barrel of his gun and packing it down with a ramrod. His hands were busy with loading wyrmfire shot as he jogged backwards, almost slipping in the sticky goo that had been another zombie before Marcus and John had finished with it. Quickly sighting down the length of his gun, he pulled the trigger. A zombie fairly flew backward under the impact, and Balthier began the process again. Bullets from Kyle and John's machine guns decimated the others.

"It's closed!" Blair pounded on the lift doors.

"No power goes to the lift," Fran observed when she could not feel the hum of operating machinery in the column.

"I'll get it," Marcus dropped to his knees as the others held off the rest of the zombies swarming over the walkway. His fingers flew over the wiring inside a small casing, reconnecting fuses and rerouting circuits, until finally, with a squeal, the elevator doors opened. They backed inside, panting, grateful for the brief respite.

Balthier tucked his ramrod back on his belt, wiping zombie grime and gunpowder off his face with a handkerchief. John glanced at him.

"Watching you fight is like watching a Civil War movie or something," he joked, relieving the tense atmosphere for the Resistance members. Balthier blinked.

"Thanks?" he quirked an eyebrow. "I am not sure whether to think that is a good thing or not."

"Let's just say it's like bein' in history class again." Blair assured him.

"It looks exactly like how the Imperial Gunners stand." Munin said. "Or rather, used to. The new guns don't really need shoulder sighting anymore."

"Ah, the last words that I hear before I die are that I am a piece of history and a relic of the past. Don't remind us of our age." Balthier said sardonically, though the eyes that he glanced at Fran with danced with mirth. She passed a few potion bottles around, her ears twitching with dry humor.

* * *

The doors opened, and they leaped out, ready for a confrontation, but the bridge was silent. In the middle of the floor there was a throne, and John realized with a start that it was made out of the bodies of the last three Terminators.

What concerned him more, however, was the figure seated upon that throne. It looked like a man, but metal gears and plates poked out from under his skin. His body itself was monstrous, with bulging muscles that almost seemed too big for the skin to contain it. Large metal wings sprouted from his back, and one arm appeared to be a cannon. John gulped.

"Ah, welcome, welcome." The figure raised its head and looked at them with a glowing blue eye. The other was covered by a sweep of Raven black hair. He looked remarkably like Munin. "Thank you for coming to my fortress. I am afraid we are a little lacking on accommodations, but feel free to stay awhile, Munin, my nephew."

Munin tensed. "You're supposed to be dead," he whispered. Vayne smiled.

"Yet here I am. Here _we_ are. Even though Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca supposedly struck me a fatal blow, I could not _really _die, because I am a _god_." His glowing blue eye roved over their faces. "I am somewhat disappointed in your choice of friends, nephew. I advised Freyk on the matter of friends and enemies the last time he was here. He was quite eager to learn, I tell you. Hugin too, though it took more effort to convince him to join me."

"Why are you here? What is your goal this time? World domination?" Balthier burst out. Vayne seemed to notice him for the first time.

"Hello, Ffamran. It is quite rude to intrude upon a family reunion. It seems that when you lost your heart, you lost your manners as well." Vayne smiled again, this time, condescendingly. Balthier's face went through a spasm, surprise chasing across his face before he banished it, lidding his eyes with his usual somnolent gaze, though they remained sharp. His hand crept over his chest as if he would shield his false heart from Vayne's piercing eye. "How did I know?" he asked. "You'll be quite happy to know that Venat lives on within me. He is quite giving with information regarding you. For example…"

The wires hanging behind the party suddenly came to life, and snatched Fran.

"You are clever, Ffamran, but not as clever as I. I am surprised you failed to notice, but didn't you see? All the assassins sent to kill you in the past three years were not Archadian, or Rozarrian, Bhujerban, or even from Balfonheim. They were _Dalmascan_. They belonged to _me._"

* * *

DUN DUN DUN!


	11. Gods and Greed

**ElTangoDeRoxanne**, I wrote an extra page for you! Cyber cookies for making my night with your new story!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

* * *

Balthier's eyes widened fractionally as he soaked in that detail, though he never removed his panicked gaze from Fran's struggling body suspended by sparking wires ten feet above the ground.

"And Queen Ishtar? What of her role? Surely she is not knowingly letting Dalmascan assassins to make attempts on the life of the most notorious pirate in Ivalice?" Munin asked. Vayne glanced to the side.

"Alas, her Majesty Ishtar is just a pawn on the chessboard of the Empire," a man said as he stepped out of the shadows. His face was identical to Munin's: the same length of black, glossy hair, the ebony gaze, the high cheekbones. However, there seemed to be a veil across his eyes.

"Hugin?" Munin lowered his eyebrows in a frown. "What are you doing here?"

"I would ask the same of you, brother. Uncle, has he come to try to take my throne?" Hugin turned toward the monstrous figure on the throne of Terminators. One of the skulls clattered its jaw at them.

"Perhaps." Vayne looked behind him. "Is Freyk here, too?"

"Yes." Hugin nodded, gesturing for the Judge Magister to come forth.

"Judge Freyk, get rid of them, these worms that have come crawling from the ancient woodwork, and get rid of those people who so fancifully call themselves the 'Resistance' as well." Vayne's smirk was like that of a Tchita serpent, deceptively amiable.

"Kill them?" Freyk asked, his invisible gaze lingering on Fran's writhing form.

"No… imprison them. The Viera will remain here with me. I would like you to know true fear, Ffamran, every second, not knowing if you are about to die. I want you to feel like the pathetic little mortal you are, not the fake god you imagine you have become." Vayne stroked a finger tipped with metal claws and burning with Mist down the center of Fran's back. She arched her spine and screamed as Mist flooded her body. Balthier took two shaky steps forward as if to help her, but collapsed.

Freyk stood over him, like a huge bat. "Not so high and mighty now, are you, pirate?" he kicked him in the gut with strength that the average human should not have. Several things in Balthier's stomach crunched wetly, and he coughed blood. "Thought you were better than everyone else, eh, you _monster_." Another kick. Balthier curled up in an attempt to ward off the blows, but they felt like hammers upon his arms. A bone cracked. John could only watch numbly as his friend was thrashed helplessly, and his partner tortured, her screams loud in his ears. Marcus jumped forward, but Hugin was suddenly in the way, twirling a Morning Star mace as easily as John twirled a practice stick. "Take that, you damned creature!" This time, a sword carved through Balthier's ribs.

"_He ain't a monster!_" Barnes yelled, and Freyk moved out of the way just as a shell from the soldier's rocket launcher blasted a dent in the wall. "I don't know what you're goin' on about, but Balthier's one of the best men I know, better n' you by a thousand miles, for sure! You call 'im a monster, but he ain't touched a hair on our heads! He and Fran have risked their lives for us on our Terminator hunt, which is more than what I'm sure you'd do for your people!" With that, he finished reloading his launcher and unleashed another round.

"Enough toying with them, Freyk. Didn't I tell you? If you give them time to talk, they might convert some of your troops." Vayne said lightly. Freyk bowed.

"Forgive me, milord. I forgot," he quickly pulled a length of rope from his belt, tying it around Balthier's hands and feet. The pirate barely even resisted— indeed, he was out cold. However, as he tied, he kept talking. "I see, so you're his friend. Well, I'm risking my life now, for the people of Archades, no, the people of _Ivalice_, by killing this fiend. How many people do you think can sleep well knowing this leeching, blood-sucking, pilfering, pirating vermin prowls the night, with nothing on its mind except dinner?"

"That's not _true!" _Barnes fired his rocket launcher again. "When he's hungry, he eats _Fran!_" The room was silent for a moment as all took in how awkward that sounded, and in the interim, Barnes reloaded and attacked once more.

The sound of Barnes's rocket launcher firing snapped the rest of the Resistance out of their stupor. John lunged for Freyk, while Marcus tackled Hugin. Freyk drew a huge sword from where it had been strapped on his back, wielding it easily with one hand. Thinking quickly, John blocked a heavy strike with his gun before Blair got a shot in with hers.

Hugin slammed the butt of his mace into Marcus's elbow, and the cyborg hissed in pain. Kyle tossed a bomb over his head, but a barrier blossomed to life around the Emperor. Munin glanced at Vayne, who was the one who had erected the paling.

"Look at them, Munin. Look at them! Look what kind of men you have fallen in with, if indeed you can call them men. Those 'Resistance' members are _gutter_ _churls_, not worth _touching_ this Ivalice. And look here at this creature…" he stroked Fran again with his Mist claw, and she trembled. "Can you even call it a woman?" Munin squinted at her. Come to think of it, there was something horribly uncouth about her. "And now look at that _beast_ lying on the ground. He was a man, once, but he gave it up for immortality— nay, perhaps even before that. Perhaps it was on the day he chose to raise a sword against me."

Munin struggled against the fog pressing down upon his mind, drowning him in his own thoughts. "These people…" he gasped, but Vayne's smile sapped at his will. "These people…" The fog was so stifling! "These people… should be locked away." He finally conceded.

"There! I knew you would see it my way." Vayne snapped his fingers, and suddenly, Marcus, Blair, Barnes, and Kyle dropped to the ground. As if resisting, John slid to the ground slowly, glaring at them balefully.

"Munin, you backstabbing bastard!" he snarled as Freyk bound his hands.

"Take them to the brig. Perhaps they will have time to think on their situation there." Hugin commanded. Freyk bowed before tying them together and leading them away.

* * *

John leaned back against the bars of the brig, resting his head on the cool metal. All of them had been allowed loose once inside, except for Marcus and Balthier. Marcus had his arms shackled to the wall, and Balthier dangled from the ceiling, wrists tied together over his head. He looked very uncomfortable, even unconscious.

"Well, what now?" Blair asked, tucking her knees under her chin. "We went after those Terminators, only to find that a _god_ was what we were up against, not some machines."

"He broke them so easily! I mean, _look! He's using them as a chair!_" Kyle babbled. Marcus sighed.

"I never thought Munin would betray us like that, though. I thought he was okay, but then he betrayed us."

Barnes shook his head. "There's something wrong with him, an' same with his brother. Vayne is manipulating them, somehow."

John blinked. "How do you know?"

"Same way I know if someone's okay or not." He placed a hand over his heart. "You feel it in here."

They languished there for perhaps two hours before Balthier woke up, and by that time, he did not seem to be doing very well at all. Blood still dripped from his lips, and his face was an unhealthy white color, black veins and arteries standing out against his pallid skin. Worst of all, his wounds were not healing. Blair voiced her opinion he might actually be dying for real. Balthier shook his head.

"I'll know when my number is up. Fran will die, and I will follow instantaneously. I am naught more than a shell with a soul bound to it, after all," he said, coughing. Blair offered him a potion bottle, but he refused. "Save it for yourselves."

After an hour more, he began to wheeze unhealthily. Apparently, the loss of his lung was starting to trouble him, and he stopped breathing. "Take off my vest, please, somebody…" he whispered. John obliged, attempting to pick at the complex knots and ties, and eventually, he managed to get them undone. Kyle gasped.

Balthier's abdomen was a mottled patchwork of bruises and welts. He was clearly bleeding internally, his stomach slightly distended from the amount of blood building up inside of it. "Cut it," he said tightly. "I don't want it to heal that way."

"You're insane!" Kyle yelled, "What if Blair's right? You don't need any more holes in you!" John had already drawn his rusty dagger.

"Move it, Reese. I'm use to this." Kyle looked very green as John went to work, and even Marcus, who had been a hardened criminal, felt sick at the sound of ripping flesh. Blood splashed to the floor like a waterfall, but by the time it stopped, the sky pirate seemed much more relaxed. John also took the opportunity to saw through the rope binding Balthier to the ceiling, and the pirate dropped to the ground with a grunt.

"So, the plan is this: we're going to rescue Fran, kill Vayne, do something horrible to Freyk, and get Munin and Hugin back on our side. Everyone understand?" John asked as Balthier began springing Marcus from the wall.

The sky pirate glanced at him. "It's too simple. We don't even have weapons." John held up his knife.

"We have a rusty dagger, and we have Marcus, and we have you. And all of us are trained in hand to hand combat. Not to mention, I've got an Esper, and don't you have some, too?"

"Good enough." Balthier conceded. "I've gotten out of prisons with less, and this brig is not half as bad as the one on the _Leviathan_."

Using a bomb made from a piece of Fire magicite Freyk hadn't thought to confiscate, they quickly escaped the brig, making for the bridge once more. John hung back with the sky pirate, who seemed to be having trouble walking.

"What's wrong?" he asked. Balthier gave him a silver glance that quickly darted on and away toward the front again.

"My legs are numb, and my fingertips, too. It's… troubling, but… let's keep going."

After a few more moments, the sky pirate tripped going up the steep flight of stairs that came out of the brig. Barnes caught him before he tumbled all the way to the bottom again.

"Is it your legs again?" he asked, but the pirate shook his head.

"Merely distracted. Mist…" the pirate said meditatively. "There's a lot of Mist here. Too much, even for a ship powered by the Sun Cryst."

"Do you know what it means?" Marcus looked down at them from the top of the stairs.

"No." Balthier replied simply, and John seemed perturbed by the pirate's lack of vocabulary. He wondered if his tongue was going numb, too. Meanwhile, the sky pirate was poking about between the metal slats that made up the staircase, muttering to himself, until finally, he slid his entire arm between the stairs and yanked.

Something popped, and Balthier grinned as he examined his prize. It was a small tiara, made of gold, with a shining white and yellow jewel set upon the tip. With ease, he snapped the jewel out of its housing and paused. Slipping the tiara into a side pouch, with a grimace, he lifted his shirt and slid the jewel inside the unhealed hole in his stomach. Blair looked ready to puke off the side of the staircase. "It must be somewhere Vayne will not think of when he senses its presence. This little jewel is our ace in the hole," he explained shortly. "I really love Fran's sense of preparedness, sometimes."

* * *

Somehow, along the way, they'd stumbled into the weapons room, and John fondled his machine gun with almost disturbing glee, before turning to Balthier, who awkwardly fumbled with his musket.

"You sure you're alright?" John asked, concern wrinkling his battle-scarred brows.

"No." Balthier whispered, before collapsing to the ground for the second time in twenty-four hours. Kyle was at his side instantly.

"Balthier!" he cried, grabbing the prone sky pirate's hand and checking for a pulse, before remembering he had none. "Crap! Is there any way to check that he's okay?"

Marcus shook his head. "The only one I can think of is checking on Fran, and are we really ready to face that metal winged monster sitting above us? _And_ Freyk, who is stronger than Balthier and I together?" John wiped his hands, stained black, on his pants.

"We have to. If Fran and Balthier are dead, so are our chances to get back to Earth," he stated, slinging the apparently dead pirate's arm about his shoulders. Marcus took the other, and they maneuvered their way into the bridge like a drunken crab. What they saw in the bridge filled them with shock!

Fran hung in the wires like a marionette. Blood traced down her legs and pooled beneath her dangling toe-tips. Vayne flicked a metal tipped finger carelessly, examining her limp body like one would a broken toy.

"It would appear I was too rough in my methods," he said coolly, glancing at John and Marcus and the pirate they dragged between them. He turned to Freyk. "And it would appear that you were too lenient in yours. That measly little heart of yours will be the death of you, Judge Magister," he drawled.

"I will take care of them." Freyk bowed.

"Please do."

Freyk jumped at them, his sword whirling, and Blair barely had time to get out of the way before it came whistling down, denting the metal floorboards. Kyle quickly sprayed the Judge Magister with shot, but he dodged all of them but for two, ignoring the holes punched in his armor.

Barnes went for Hugin, attempting to wrestle him down, but he badly underestimated the Emperor's prowess, falling to the ground as his feet were swept from under him. However, he managed to plant his feet firmly in Hugin's stomach, and shoved, sending him tumbling backward. Growling obscenities under his breath, the young Emperor wheezed for breath. John and Marcus, however, went for Vayne. Munin took three steps forward to intervene before John used to but of his gun to bludgeon him across the face. His nose snapped, and blood sprayed the ground, but he immediately retaliated, scoring John's right arm with a rapier. Vayne regarded them all with boredom clear upon his features, and when Marcus got close enough, moved just to the side, revealing one of the Terminator's heads. Its jaw cranked open, and a blast of fire issued out. Marcus rolled, putting out the flames, but a long skeletal arm, coated in metal, snaked out to pummel him. With a bear-like roar, he grabbed the limb and ripped it free from its housing, before plunging it through Vayne's chest.

Vayne blinked and gave a puzzled cough, but flicked his wrist. Marcus went flying across the room, slamming into a control panel. Reaching up, the ancient ruler jerked the arm out of his chest, examining it and tossing it aside, before taking aim with his cannon arm. "I told you, you cannot kill me, for I am a god, and _you_ are a lump of metal soon to be scrapped."

However, as if a spell had been broken, Munin dashed forward, slamming his shoulder into the cannon. The shot went wide, taking chunks out of the surrounding walls. In the same movement, Munin flipped over Vayne's arm, landing next to Fran. Uncorking an X-potion bottle and shoving phoenix down into her hand, he doused her wounds in potion, and forced the rest of it down her throat.

Fran coughed and spluttered, her skin steaming as the potion healed the numerous cuts on her arms, legs, back, and stomach. Munin quickly cut her down from where she hung, captive.

"I have figured you out, Vayne Solidor!" Munin shouted. "You sent out a signal calling to Freyk and Hugin's ship when they visited Rabanastre, and curious, they investigated, whereupon they found you very much alive. From there, you promised them power and prosperity, and Freyk fell first, for he has always been an avaricious man. Hugin took some convincing— and you had to Charm him in the end, just like me!"

Vayne began to laugh, throwing his head back. "A thinker after my own heart. That is true— that is absolutely true. But even if I have lost you and Hugin, Freyk is ever so much more useful than the two of you stubborn brats will ever be. He had partaken of my power, and like the Dalmascan assassins, he is also _mine_." He advanced on them, towering even over Barnes, the tallest of all of them. He extended a hand, impossibly huge, over their heads, looking as if he were going to crush them under his fist, before his hand stopped, held up by none other than Zalera the Death Seraph, his bony back bowed under the weight.

John gaped up at the Esper, then glanced down at his wrist. Some blood had leaked down his arm, right across the brand, and activated it.

_What shalt thou have me do, O Hume of mine?_ Its voice was deep, resonating within his mind.

"Fight for us— get rid of Vayne, get rid of Freyk, I don't care! Just _do something!_" John stammered. Zalera shrugged off Vayne's hand, and the Undying studied him with cool indifference.

_Foolish master… The power of the god inside his body prevents me from killing him outright, and Freyk is under the thrall of that power. I can do nothing,_ Zalera said.

"Then possess Balthier." Fran suggested from where she leaned against Munin for support. "His soul has been separated from his body because I almost died, but it is still chained to the medallion in his chest. He will return later: and he has no need for his body right now, but we do."

_The Viera is cruel._ Zalera's laughter echoed inside their minds, even as purple and black energy crackled in the air. After a moment, the Esper faded, changing into a cloud of purple mist that eventually settled over Balthier's prone form. The sky pirate's eyes opened, focusing on Freyk with a bone-white gaze, before he bared his teeth and lunged. Freyk barely had time to move before Zalera procured a dagger of dark magic between his fingers and swiped at him with it, slicing through his armor with deadly ease. Freyk put a hand to the breach, gasping for breath.

"You broke my paling! What devilry is this, pirate? What new trap have you contrived?" he shouted. Balthier, or rather Zalera wearing Balthier's body, cocked his head, narrowing his colorless eyes.

_I make no traps, nor weave webs of deception with which to entrap thou, mortal. Even an Esper has its honor,_ he said without moving his lips, though they heard him well enough. Freyk drew his sword.

"Then I shall meet you in kind!"

They engaged again, and Freyk managed to carve a small channel in Balthier's shoulder. However, Zalera's black dagger sliced off Freyk's arm. Blood dripped down his armor, boiling and hissing out of the wound.

_Thou art outmatched._ Zalera stood over him, twirling his sparking dagger with ease through his long fingers, not fearing any cuts. _Thou shalt yield unto me._

"Never! Never, never, never! I can never fall to you, heretic! You are damned, you are a criminal, you are a _gods forsaken monster!_ The like of me can never fall to you! Never! Nev—!"

His speech ended abruptly as his head was separated from his shoulders by one smooth stroke of Zalera's unstoppable knife. It thumped to the ground with a metallic clang, rolling across the room and leaking a trail of blood as it went. The body itself keeled over sideways, Mist pouring out of bones laced with nethicite, before it exploded.

The purple mist surrounding Balthier lifted, and he wavered, slowly sinking to his knees next to the shattered corpse, head bowed. As the mist departed, they could hear Zalera's voice, deep and terrible.

_Come, silly mortal, come with me— no peaceful sleep of the realm beyond shall I grant thee. There is a price to pay for rising against the god of the dead, and I shall exact it with great pleasure. _As his laughter faded, so did the sound of Freyk's screams.

* * *

Blech.


	12. Bahamut Descends

So. Today's a snow day, so I got an extra chapter out! I should probably be working on history but… OH MY GAWD IT'S SO COLD IN THE HOUSE MY FINGERS FEEL LIKE THE BLOOD IS FREEZING INSIDE OF THEM. It's currently 17 degrees F outside. Brrrr! My poor plants! I forgot to bring my Bay plant inside! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Okay, enough ranting. Thanks to **fallacies**, **emeraldonyxdragon** (you're back, yay!), and **ElTangoDeRoxanne**, for giving me AWESOME reviews. You made me feel warm and fuzzy inside (though not warm enough, I am positively _freezing_). And also, Tango-chan made me laugh because she used FUDGE MUFFINS in her review two chapters ago. Gotta luv those fudge muffins.

One more thing on names: Solanum, Balthier's successor, gets his name from the genus Solanum, which is the group of plants including nightshades and potatoes. Yes, potatoes are a type of nightshade. This is just one of The Giant Daifuku's weird quirks: she loves plants and soil and vegetables.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

* * *

Vayne took in the scene before him, shaking his head and sighing. "Only a fool would overestimate their own power and capability, Judge Magister Freyk, and you have paid the ultimate price for your idiocy." His blazing blue eye drifted toward Hugin, but the young man shook his head. Apparently, the spell upon him had been broken at the same time as Munin's.

"I am not your puppet anymore, Uncle. You are alone in this fight," he said. His voice had lost the imperious edge that had so grated against John's nerves. "Your blight will be erased from the face of this Ivalice, and no longer will Dalmasca cower in your shadow!"

Vayne's visible eye flickered red as he rose from his throne, once again towering over them. "Such words are unbecoming toward your uncle, feckless child. Do not worry— I will not allow you to disgrace yourself any further." Mist poured out of his body, wrapping around the throne. The Terminator's bodies separated with a clatter and began to fuse with the Undying, completely covering his skin with metal plates. The three heads writhed at the end of long, scintillating necks, yowling and snapping and breathing flaming Mist. Vayne's own head elongated slightly, teeth sliding passed his lips, metal gears poking out from his overstretched skin like dragon scales. His hair whipped about like a mane, and his tail lashed like a whip, shattering windows and showering them with glass. A forest of spikes made of fractured steel bristled out of his taut back. His breath rumbled deep in his throat, an inhuman sound that was like the growling of a thousand lions, fingers that were as thick as Balthier's musket barrel digging into the floor, each tipped with a vicious claw. They backed away as he grew still more, filling the bridge until all they could see was the long length of his fleshy brown and cold silver body wrapping around the room.

Vayne, or the creature that had been Vayne, roared, filling the room with crackling, blistering heat from his breath, before lunging. They scattered like ten-pins, and he crashed out of a window, plummeting toward the desert far below.

Or so they would have liked to think. The mechanical dragon soared by the broken windows, screeching, six sets of wings pumping to keep its bulk afloat.

"He has truly ascended to the namesake of his demesne," Fran said with a bitter smile. "Bahamut, indeed." John, Blair, Kyle, and Marcus opened fire at its stomach, the bullets shattering what was left of the broken window. Vayne rolled, grinning his dragon's grin, and the shots rattled off his metal plated back harmlessly. They all had to duck for cover as Fran's Ardor spell bounced off a magical shield he erected and came rocketing back at them, melting control panels and gun ports. The room filled with flames and smoke as gunpowder and ammunition ignited. Vayne fanned the flames with his massive wings as he circled once more, screaming triumphantly and launching a ball of lava from his jaws through the window. Fran beat at flames licking at her stomach veil as she skipped backwards from the advancing slurry of molten rock, chanting a Blizzaga spell and breathing a thick layer of ice over it to hinder its progress. Vayne clacked his claws authoritatively, and her spell cut off in mid-cast as she was struck mute. He whirled on a nearby airship zooming by, grabbing it in his claws and throwing it through the bridge. Kyle jumped to the side— he had almost forgotten about the war outside.

"Just hold still and die!" Barnes fired his rocket launcher, only to infuriate Vayne and momentarily knock him off course. The dragon's form blazed and blurred with Mist, before a swish of its tail sent the spell flying at him. Barnes stumbled, staring down in horror as his skin began to turn the ashy grey of stone.

"_Barnes!_" Blair shrieked, rushing toward him, and he turned toward her sluggishly. "What's going on? What did that thing do?"

"My legs… they're turning into rock!" Barnes exclaimed, watching the grey patches spread. Blair wept hot, angry tears.

"Well, I don't _want_ you to be a rock! Stop it somehow! Fran!" Fran pointed to her throat, indicating she was Silenced, and shook her head. They had no curative items. Blair screamed in frustration.

"I go to sleep for a minute and look what happens!" a strong, clear voice rang out. Blair whirled, and almost cried once more at the sight that greeted her eyes. Balthier rose to his feet with serpentine grace, the words to a Stona spell tumbling from his lips. With a fluid gesture, he cast the White Magick over Barnes, and the grey patches faded. The man shivered with the memory of almost becoming stone.

"I'll never envy those poor men who fell to Medusa, for sure," Barnes said, slapping at his shins to get the feeling back into them.

"You took your sweet time coming back." John glared at him accusingly.

"Getting into a body burning with magick is not pleasant. Try it sometime. See how you like it." Balthier said tartly, shifting to watch the dragon swoop by. "Vayne, I presume? There's a hideous beastie if I ever saw one. It makes me wonder how he ever had the right to call me a monster."

"Nothing we do can even scratch him." Marcus said glumly as they sidestepped another fireball. This time, a Thundaga that would have fried them if they did not dodge accompanied it. Marcus's legs went into spasms as a stray bolt jumped from a control panel to his limb. Balthier began chanting a Vox spell, directing it to Fran, who received it and almost immediately launched into a Dispel incantation, slipping on an Agate ring as she did so. Blue light surrounded Vayne, and the strange flicker of light that had been his shield vanished.

"Yes!" Kyle pumped his fist as he managed to lob a bomb out of the window, lodging it between Vayne's spikes. It exploded, and for the first time, the dragon let out an infuriated scream. His claws smashed through the walls, grabbing and snatching, and shrapnel raked John across the midsection. Fran was instantly at his side, pressing a hand laden with Curaga to his stomach.

"Fran! Catch!" Balthier slid his fingers underneath his vest and into the hole in his stomach, clenching the jewel in his hand before tossing it to the Viera. It spiraled through the air, twinkling.

Vayne spotted the shine, and his eyes ignited— though if it was in greed or in rage, it was impossible to tell. Fran missed the catch as the dragon barreled through the room in an attempt to grab the jewel, throwing her to the ground. She curled up into a ball as the rest of his body roared over her. The jewel skittered across the ground. Hugin dove for it before it fell into a deep crack, sensing its importance, rolling across the ground as spires of ice erupted out of the floor, summoned by Vayne. He clutched it in his sweaty fingers, jumping up and handing it to Fran, who accepted it.

"_Into his mouth!_" Balthier called to her, as the room surrounding them boiled with Mist. Fran nodded, and he unleashed his Quickening.

His fingertips glowed with blue magic as he wove an intricate web before him. Above them, maps of an ancient world known only to the gods flickered brightly in the starlit void. Water, green-blue and white with foam, lapped at their heels before surging forward, almost up to their knees. Blair clung to Marcus like a barnacle to an anchor, lest the unrelenting tide swept her away.

Vayne seemed to sense what was about to happen, even if he had not figured out their plan, and attempted to fly out of range of the wall of water that now reared up behind Balthier, the crest of the wave churning and frothing like the mouth of a hungry beast. The sky pirate smiled.

"I suspected you would do that," he murmured, before snapping his fingers. A lattice of blue beams, not unlike the spell he had used to summon the wall of water, surrounded Vayne, trapping him in place. The dragon spewed fire, vented Mist, and sprayed Dark magick in every direction, but the lattice held, though just barely. It was long enough for Balthier to put his fingers to his lips and blow, the sound shrieking though the emptiness, and the wave rushed forward, pummeling Vayne under a barrage of icy seawater. The dragon's roar of pain and rage blended with the echoes of Balthier's whistle. The tide had barely receded when Fran jumped out of the wall of water that had hidden her, the crystal in her hand.

"Come, it is time to feast on the Nethicite you love so much!" she exclaimed, before using Bravery fueled muscles to force open Vayne's razor edged mouth, thrusting her arm inside. She used an ice spell to freeze the jewel to his tongue and keep him from swallowing it, pulling her arm out quickly before he ripped it off. Vayne screamed again, tossing his head, flinging Fran from her perch just in front of his snout. Barnes caught her, just as John took careful aim at the jewel on the end of the dragon's lolling red tongue.

"I think it's time that Mister Solidor was introduced to my friend, Mister Gun," he said, a grin splitting his face end to end. Vayne snarled, lunging through the control center of _Bahamut_ again and destroying another wall. As he opened his mouth for another eardrum shattering roar, John pulled the trigger.

"Hasta la vista, baby."

Burning Mist exploded out of the crystal, scalding everything it touched. The party took cover behind one of the bulkheads Vayne had not destroyed on his rampage, and even then, Balthier and Fran still choked on the amount of sizzling Mist in the air. The blast consumed Vayne in a terrific ball of boiling Mist and magic fire, a final scream escaping his throat— and it was the scream of a dying man, not a beast born of greed and metal.

"The last remaining fragment of the Sun Cryst is destroyed," Fran whispered as bits of charred flesh and burned, twisted metal rained down around them. "Ne'er again will it tempt Hume kind with its power." She turned to Balthier, who fretted with the state of his ash stained cuffs. "How ever did you find it?"

"Two ways— there was so much Mist coming out of that tiny shard that I swore I was being smothered. And…" he blushed, the color an ugly black stain against his sickly white skin. "I tripped on it."

Blair burst into laughter, rolling on the ground. Hugin and Munin shared identical smirks, and Kyle joined Blair on the floor.

"I did not think the leading man ever tripped?" Fran raised an eyebrow, and the grey pall of Balthier's skin deepened further, all the way to the tips of his ears.

"Apparently he does when there are shards of the Sun Cryst lying around," he mumbled. "Let's get out of here. That last barrage of Mist could not have been good for the foundations."

* * *

When they emerged onto the sands of Dalmasca, John blinked, shivering. Snow fell from the sky, the soft flakes muting the sound of crackling flames and burning ships. "Snow? In the desert?" he asked, reaching out and catching a few crystals on the palm of his hand. Balthier nodded, turning his head up toward the snow. Flakes stuck in his eyelashes. Fran flicked her ears as the snow landed on them.

"Mist is known to do strange things to the weather. It is no surprise that the amount of Mist in that Sun Cryst shard was able to make it snow in the Estersand," she explained. Kyle took out a small camera that had somehow managed to escape the whole ordeal unscathed.

"Star would like to see this…" he muttered, gazing in wonder at the falling snow. Marcus held Blair close as she shivered, clearly underdressed for the weather in her army tank top. Barnes stood off to the side, quietly observing the mangled wreckage of _Bahamut_'s bridge.

Fran opened up the communicator Balthier passed to her, broadcasting on the open frequencies.

"This is Fran, co-pilot of the _Strahl_. On behalf of the Captain, we thank you for your service to Ivalice, and we assure you that your efforts will be awarded handsomely upon our return to Balfonheim." Fran gently nudged Balthier as she said that, and he grumbled under his breath. "In the meantime, we would also appreciate transportation back to the city, for us and our friends."

Several ships swooped down, almost crashing into each other in their haste to be selected as a ship for the Pirate King and his consort. Balthier looked each one over with a critical eye, and when his gaze fell upon a ship that looked like a three-pronged leaf, he narrowed his eyes.

"This one," he gestured, and a collective groan was heard over the communications line, but for one person, who gave an ecstatic "YES!"

Balthier stomped into the cockpit. "Solanum? Why, pray tell, is my successor on the battle front?" he asked in caustic tones. Solanum, a rather small man with a shock of red-brown hair and laughing green eyes turned around from the pilot's seat.

"Ar, well I was wantin' to pitch in, see? Wouldn' do no good if everyone else was helpin' if I was sittin' around in that posh study ye gave me," he said in the harsh tongue of the Balfonheim Sea Pirates.

"And if Vayne had grabbed _your_ airship and thrown it through the bridge? What would I do then? Wait another century for the perfect one?" Balthier purred, though his silver eyes had narrowed to dangerous slits. Solanum, clearly sensing his danger, gulped.

"Weel now… there was this bloke, y'see? He wanted a ride o'er to the battlefield! Said 'e wanted to see ya!" he babbled.

"Someone wanted to see me?" Balthier cocked his head, hauntingly like the way Zalera had while the Esper had inhabited his body.

"_Balthy!_" someone roared. John looked up as someone strode into the cockpit, dreadlocks flying and necklaces tinkling. Balthier's face, which had been an unhealthy shade of grey, drained back to a color more reminiscent of mushrooms that had never seen the light of day. He turned around slowly, a look clearly screaming _Oh GODS no, please, please, gods no! _painted on his face. The apparition did not go away.

"_Bloody hell!_" he cried as Jack Sparrow wrapped his arms around him.

"Balthy! Long time no see!" the pirate was shouting.

"Let go of me!" Balthier pushed him away. "What are you doing here?" He grasped Jack's hand, brows furrowing. "Your hands are the same as mine. Have you…?"

Jack looked grim. "Yes. I died of radiation sickness shortly after Judgment Day…" he said, shaking his head. Balthier sighed.

"I assume Will took you in after that?"

"Yes. What wif all the people who died and are dyin', he's got his work cut out for him. He sent me here, actually. Said the situation on Earth was rather dire, if you know what I mean. The Resistance against the machines is crumbling— slowly, but surely. They need their leader back."

"How did you know he was here?" Balthier asked.

"Well, you bein' dead and all, Will was able to sense when you came back to Earth, and when you left it. And when news circulated around the towns he'd planted us in (since _he_ can't walk on land but once every ten years) that John had vanished, he put two and two together and realized that you guys probably went on a mission to save the world and ended up in Ivalice instead. He put me in a dinghy and sailed me off the edge of the world, and well, here I am!" Jack grinned. Hugin glanced at John from where he stood on the edge of the group.

"You are indeed popular if even the dead will rise to aid your cause," he said, looking at Jack and Balthier. John shrugged.

"They're useful, that's for sure." He grinned, and Balthier's fingers twitched in a gesture reminiscent of throttling something.

"I am going to ignore that, and instead tell Solanum that if he does not get to Balfonheim in one hour, I want his resignation. Fran, with me, please." Balthier exited the cockpit with as much grace as he could muster, considering that his guts were about to spill out, the entire group was laughing uproariously, and both of them looked more like beggars than Pirate royalty.

* * *

Yays!


	13. Full Circle

Thank you so much for reading _Our War Torn Earth_! And I did not notice it until today, but the title has a typo! Oops.

Well now, I've been having really _bad_ karma. First, this morning I slipped on a sheet of ice on my driveway as I went out to bring my yard waste been inside and now I have a fancy bruise on my behind. Second, my cat barfed at five in the morning and I had to get up to clean it up to find that my house was fifty degrees inside. Talk about cold reality. And finally, I swallowed a chicken foot knuckle. On purpose. And then it got stuck. I almost choked on rice trying to get it all down. Now, as I am working on the sequel, I am waiting for a lightning bolt to strike me dead as I sit.

Yes, that's right. Sequel. The next sequel will be up within the next day or two, so check my profile page! The title will be _The Hanging Man_. This is based off the card The Hanging Man in a deck of tarot cards, who represents paradox, that things are not what they seem.

Thank you to **ElTangoDeRoxanne**, **fallacies**, and **emeraldonyxdragon**. If you wish, I shall send you a PM when the next one is up! Thank you for taking your time to read my craziness!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

* * *

The new _Strahl_ hummed to life, glossair engines whirling. Fran flicked a few switches, and Balthier's fingers twitched on the joystick. John glanced back at Nono from his seat. The Moogle was sitting in Jack's lap, watching the pilot and co-pilot's every movement with his button eyes. Fran looked out the window at the _Strahl_'s shimmering wings, spread to allow them the most maneuverability in the low speed test flight. The test: going through the hole at the Ridorana Cataract.

Balthier also looked out of the window as he skillfully steered his ship, but his gaze focused on John's reflection in the glass. "Ready to return home?" he asked. John met his eyes in the windowpane.

"Perhaps. I will miss the peace, and my number might be up as soon as I return," he said quietly. Balthier averted his eyes, but Fran shook her head.

"That is the lot of the mortals. Death waits at the side of every road." She said as the _Strahl_ glided forward, light flashing off its gold paneling. Balthier steered them south toward the Naldoan Sea.

"Well if you die, you'll be in good hands." Jack consoled him. "Will is a good man."

"He hasn't grown tentacles yet, has he?" Balthier asked. Jack shuddered.

"Oh, no! I'd have jumped ship if he did!" the pirate exclaimed, shivering again. "He ain't no Davy Jones!"

The _Strahl_ made good time over the Naldoan Sea when Fran and Balthier retracted the wings. Unlike the old _Strahl_, which boomed over land and sea, the new _Strahl_ screamed through the air, ripping it apart with her dragonfly's head and razor edged wings. Marcus closed his eyes against a wave of nausea that rippled his stomach.

"You okay, Marcus?" Barnes asked, and Marcus looked at him in surprise.

"Yeah… why do you ask?"

Barnes shrugged. "I care, that's all." Marcus smiled.

"I'm fine."

"Where are we?" Blair whispered. The sea beneath them was as smooth as glass, and a night sky stretched above them.

"This is Earth," Fran stated as their map system fizzed and died. "The _Strahl_ does not have charts for this world, so the navigation system has failed," she informed Balthier. The sky pirate cracked his knuckles.

"Flying by hand was always a fashionable way to go," he quipped, gripping the control stick. "Jack, where are we?"

"Er… I don't really know…" Sparrow replied, squinting out of the window and upsetting Nono, who had been dozing in his lap. "Will and Hector will probably show up soon and guide us back to LA."

"And back to the daily regime of life and death fighting the machines." Kyle said gloomily.

"We would do more for you if we could." Fran said, "But the only way we found we could help was to give a parting gift to you."

"A parting gift?" John leaned forward, and Balthier gestured over his head awkwardly with a ring-bedecked hand.

"Look under my seat. It's the package wrapped in wanted signs." John snorted when he saw it— there were wanted signs for Fran, signs for Balthier, signs for Solanum, even signs for _Nono_. Wrapping gifts in one's wanted signs must have been a pirate tradition or something.

He unwrapped the box carefully, and stared at the contents. Bullets.

"Very practical... um…" he laughed.

Balthier grinned. "They are our special bullets— filled with _very_ corrosive acid. Let the Terminators chew on _that_."

"Once, Balthier was drunk while we were making these. He melted his fingertips off." Fran said in a surreptitious manner, but Balthier flexed his right fingers.

"Please, Fran, don't air out my dirty laundry like that," he complained over their laughter. She shrugged, a small smile playing about her lips.

Just then, the _Flying Dutchman_ sprang from the waves. Jack hailed it by waving wildly from the window.

"Well, there's our ride!" he exclaimed. Kyle looked at it.

"_That thing?_" he asked. Balthier looked at them sadly.

"Gentlemen, lady," he gave a courtly bow to Blair, kissing the back of her hand. She blushed, though she shivered at the touch of his icy lips. "It is here that we must part. I thoroughly enjoyed your company over the past week, though I admit I have never been killed in so many different ways in one week before. May you have luck in winning your war."

"He means he's sad to see you go and wishes you luck." Jack chimed, and Balthier stomped on his foot. The pirate gasped, doubling over and cursing profusely. "You haven't lost the ability to stomp like that, I s— oh!" Balthier's steel shod heel ground into Jack's leather booted toes.

John shook Balthier's hand, swallowing a lump in his throat. "It was an honor to fight at your side."

Fran smiled at him warmly. "Perhaps we shall meet again, in this world or the next."

The Resistance members and Jack descended the _Strahl_'s ladder onto the deck of the _Flying Dutchman_. Balthier poked his head out of the trapdoor.

"Will!" he shouted, and the man emerged from his cabin. "How's Elizabeth?"

"Alive and kicking—quite literally." Will grinned. "You'll find her in LA."

"Elizabeth with a machine gun… Nightmare fuel, that." Balthier shuddered, and Will laughed.

"See you around?"

"Maybe. Ivalice is changing— and the leading man must change as well, or his act will get boring quickly." Fran said, dragging Balthier back into the ship.

Marcus watched as the _Strahl_ refolded her wings and zipped toward the horizon, light from the rising sun gleaming on her sides. "There goes a man of many talents. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here." He said. Blair put a hand on his chest, where the pump whirred away under her fingers.

"_We_ wouldn't be here, metal man. _We_ wouldn't be here. Now, don't we have a city to save?"

* * *

_In Ivalice, One-hundred years later:_

Two figures in black travel stained cloaks walked through Rabanastre and down the stairs into the Muthru Bazaar, carrying nothing but an empty crate. More than one passerby stopped to stare at the odd pair— a young man and a Viera. It was the latter who attracted the most attention, though more than one woman paused in her shopping to take in the man's handsome face. The pair stopped at the far end of the bazaar, setting their crate down in front of them. However, they produced no wares, and a few people began to wander toward them, curious. It was then that the young man raised his voice, just loud enough to be heard over most of the Bazaar clamor.

"Come one, come all, and hear stories and legends dating from the Antiquity period!" he called, and several heads turned. "Listen to a story of Princesses and Princes, Empires and Emperors, Dragons and Warriors! Listen to a story of the struggle for Dalmasca's freedom, and the fall of Nabudis!"

Very soon, a large crowd of people were conjugating before the man and the Viera and their empty crate. The Viera nudged the tawny Hume's shoulder. "I think there are enough now, Famfrit," she whispered, and he smiled at her charmingly.

"Of course, Francesca," he replied, and turned back to the crowd.

"Now, many of you, I am sure, have read about the Nethicite War in your history textbooks. Am I right?" Heads nodded, and a murmur swept the crowd. The two people were storytellers. Excitement visibly crackled in the air. "I am here to give a true account of that tale: the whole truth, the real truth, and nothing _but_ the truth. That includes the romance and the drama, the battles and the adventures, _exactly_ as they happened." Famfrit gave them a sly, quicksilver smirk, and bowed to Francesca. She stepped forward onto the box he gracefully vacated, and held up a hand for silence. The crowd immediately stilled.

"Once upon a time, in this very place, in Lowtown beneath our feet, there lived a young orphan named Vaan…"

* * *

Ta-da!


End file.
